Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
by Queen Jane Approximately
Summary: Since childhood, Steve, Soda, and Eleanor have been best friends. Then the local draft board lands them both on the front lines in Vietnam and Eleanor finds herself alone against tumultuous times. No one ever promised her it'd be easy. Chapter 26 up now.
1. One

CURRENTLY BEING RE-WRITTEN!! Don't read this, seriously.

**A/N: **I came up with this plot after listening back and forth between Jimmy Reed and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and I decided to give it a go. This would be post-book, so Johnny and Dally are dead.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Girl," written by John Lennon (supposedly co-written by Paul McCartney), and performed by The Beatles.

_Don't Think Twice, It's All Right_

**Chapter One: **

" … _is there anybody going to listen to my story / all about the girl who came to stay? … "_

I used to like to play the piano, to just sit there in a completely relaxed state and allow my fingers to dance up and down the keys like marionettes. Those eighty-eight black-and-white keys and my fingers, they had a bond. An understanding.

And I had a gift for playing, apparently, though I doubtless ever actually acknowledged that myself.

My dad used to sit me down and teach me songs by his old blues favorites, like Jimmy Reed and Robert Johnson. My mom's choices were a bit more reserved, and she'd practice patience with me, teaching me classic pieces like "Greensleeves" in small, easy doses.

But it was my dad's teachings that stuck. Ever since he'd shown me how to play a simple twelve bar blues scale, I'd become completely smitten with the style, and very fascinated with the fact that it was so widely used by so many artists, in so many songs, and yet it still was able to grasp that air of originality for whomever used it.

And I loved the way the singers were able to express themselves through their music. It was such a pivotal time in history, what with all of the segregation and conflicts with civil rights, and the fact that they were able – hell, that they were even _allowed _– to do that was just amazing. Even at ten years of age I knew this.

So while I learned and punched out a very contorted twelve bar blues scale on our piano, my dad would distract me further by playing his old wartime records in the background, low but audible, an attempt to branch out my mind even further. Usually it'd just be Glenn Miller or Artie Shaw, but lots of times he'd throw in some Benny Goodman, as well. This was another style that I grew to adore, and nowadays, this earns me teases and taunts and banters about it from my brothers and many of the other greasers around here, but I pay it absolutely no mind. They just don't understand about things, and besides, they like their rock 'n roll like they like their women: loud, fast, and out of control. Most of them, anyway. And that is something that I could do without.

The only problem with this story, however, is that I haven't sat down at the piano bench for months, and it feels as if I've been away from it longer. I cannot go back, though. Since my parents died, I've had no motivation, no want to play anymore. Feeling my fingers run like silk over the keys brings back too many memories, and every time that I try to do it, my mouth goes dry and my throat becomes so tight that I fear I will choke.

This is probably why I haven't attempted another go at the piano. Instead, I have taken up the guitar. I taught myself everything that I'd learned from age six, until now. The only difference was that the guitar had strings, and I had to learn how to barre chords and move up and down the neck quickly. This wasn't so difficult, though, and soon I found that I could do it quite with ease.

It also took my mind off of the fact that I, along with my brothers, was now basically an orphan.

It was a car crash that had taken my parents. I never knew what happened, exactly. Everybody refused to tell me anything. This made me feel quite alone. And that's when I stopped playing the piano. I thought I might stop forever – it was just too much for me to handle, too much for me to take in – but I haven't quite decided yet. I may pick it up again someday.

Though my parents are gone, I thank the Lord every day that I'm not completely alone. I was born into a family where, besides my mother, I was the only female. Of my three brothers – Darry, Sodapop, and Ponyboy – I was born third oldest, or second youngest, depending on which way you choose to look at it. Lots of people seem to think that my brother Soda and I are twins, because we favor most, and are so close in age, but really, we're not. We're a whole ten months apart, me being younger.

At twenty, my brother Darry is the eldest of the four of us, and at fourteen, Ponyboy is the youngest. Soda is sixteen. I am nearly that, myself. Our closeness in age may be one of the leading reasons behind why we are so close as siblings. This is what made me feel less alone after our parents died, this closeness that we shared. Basically Soda and I are like best friends, but more than that because we are brother and sister. When he was six and I was almost that myself, he met a boy at school named Steve Randle, and soon this friendship was tripled. We balanced each other out. Soda was very happy-go-lucky and devil-may-care, while Steve possessed a tough, cocky _anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better _attitude, and I was the free spirit. I was the one who was constantly on the lookout for the two of them, keeping them out of trouble. But we always got along real good, hardly ever fought except for trivial things, and have been inseparable ever since.

When I played the piano, they would listen for a while, but after about five or ten minutes they would grow very bored, and would start playing various keys just to annoy me and cause me to make numerous mistakes. Now _this _is real music, they'd say, while one of them banged repeatedly on the lowest key and the other on the highest. This usually got me very upset, but surprisingly, I could never remain angry with them for very long.

Then a couple of months ago, just when I thought that we were finally beginning to see a sense of normalcy around the house, a whole chain of events that spawned one after the other brought us another wave of tragedy, and Johnny and Dallas – two of the other guys in our gang – ended up dead. The whole story is very heart-wrenching, and I don't want to go into detail, but that whole night is one night that will remain burned into my memory for the rest of my life. I know that I won't ever forget it.

Johnny was such a sensitive, soft-spoken kid, and Dallas ... he was so hard and angry all of the time. Johnny didn't deserve the card that life dealt him, coming from such a deranged home life, and in a way, Dallas didn't deserve to die, at least not in the way he did. I can still picture it, in the back of the mind ... the way he looked as he dropped to the ground under the street light that night ... the way we all just stood there in agony, knowing that there was absolutely nothing that we could do ... the way that I broke down into tears, knowing things were never going to be the same again ... the way Soda pulled me into an embrace and told me not to cry, though I could see tears in his eyes too ... the way Steve – cocky, arrogant, angry Steve – had slipped his hand into mine – a friendly, comforting gesture – and didn't let go until we got back to the house, completely shaken. The way the rest of us seemed to soften up a little bit.

In that one year I have grown up quite a bit. I had learned so much, yet I could comprehend so little, but I had grown up. I thought I'd seen it all. You've seen the world, Eleanor, I kept telling myself. You've seen the hatred of the world in a time frame of only one year, of only one tragic, life-altering night ...

But I was naïve, and you're not so worldly at fifteen.

xxx

Reviews are appreciated!  
Let me know what you think so far!  
Chapter Two coming soon...


	2. Two

**A/N: **Thanks for all the reviews so far! I'm glad this is going over well. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Turn-Down Day," written and performed by The Cyrkle.

**Chapter Two:**

" … _it's a turn-down day, nothin' on my mind / it's a turn-down day, and I dig it … "_

"_The Three Musketeers"  
Summer, 1965_

This was what was written on the back of a faded color photograph, my very favorite photograph of Soda, Steve, and I. It was taken down at the river, on the beach. None of us had wanted to have our picture taken at that point – we had been enjoying the sunny afternoon, talking amongst ourselves – but my mother insisted.

And that's what she had written on the back, after the film was developed. It still choked me up, to see her handwriting, but I always glanced at it from time to time, reassuring myself that, yes, she was very real.

She gave me that picture and told me that the boys wouldn't understand the special meaning that it held, and that it clearly expressed our relationship as friends, and that she didn't ever want me to let anything happen to it.

I never did leave the house without that picture.

It was taken the very same day that I got that terrible sunburn, the one that had me practically drowning in aloe vera. We all got burned that day, having made the mistake of putting on hardly any sunscreen – nobody thought about things like skin cancer or sun poisoning back then – but I got it the worst. By the time we had returned home that evening, my discomfort had grown so severe that I was nearly in tears, and the minute we walked in the door, my mom dropped all of her beach gear and began coating my nose in calamine lotion, and my arms, shoulders, back, and chest in aloe that chilled my burning skin right down to the very marrow in my bones.

Of course, my two loyal counterparts found this to be very facetious, and they laughed at me. Maybe that's what you get, Eleanor, I'd said to myself, for being the only female in this relationship.

"It's not funny, guys," I said to them. "Stop your laughing right now, or I'm telling Mama."

This only made them laugh harder, but that was probably because I was fourteen at the time – much too old for tattling. I think they tried to stop, once, and maybe apologize, but I wasn't sure, and eventually I grew very fed up with it. Knowing that they were sunburned, too, I dug my fingernails into their shoulders, right where the sun had gotten them the most, clawing slowly down the length of their arms, until Soda shoved me away with more force and momentum than I knew he had intended to use. It was one of the only times that I ever saw them looking upset with me. My mom looked none too happy, either.

"See?" I said, my eyes shooting daggers. "Do you see now? How do _you _like it?"

"Eleanor Elaine," Mama chided, "if I _ever _see you doing that again!"

"But they were laughing at me! What'd you _want_ me to do?"

"Certainly not that. Now, I want you all to apologize to each other, and then I want you and your brothers to go get ready for bed. It has been a very long day. And as for you two," she added, her piercing gaze fixed directly on Soda and Steve, "your laughing at her was unnecessary and mean. She can't help it that she got sunburn."

There was silence for a moment, a wordless communion between my brother and my friend and myself. That's what our friendship was. If we weren't finishing off each other's sentences, then we were communicating by way of eye contact only. We could do that. We possessed that power. That's how close we were.

But now we were trying to decide which one of us would be the first to break that silence with a much-needed apology. All three of us had acted like children, for a moment.

"Sorry for laughin' at ya, El," Soda said at last, looking quite guilty.

"Yeah," Steve added. "Sorry."

"You're not forgiven," I snapped, my voice dripping venom.

"_Eleanor." _

"I mean … it's okay. I'm sorry, too. For scratching you."

I couldn't help my being angry with them. If they were the ones with the practically fried skin, if they were the ones in an excruciating amount of pain, then I surely wouldn't be laughing. I had to wonder, too, if they were really, _truly _sorry … or if they were just saying it because they had to. I was sorry – I knew that I had acted foolish and childish. I only scratched when I was little. Honestly, that was my defense mechanism. My fingernails were usually fairly long, and always posed some sort of hazard. And that was exactly why I used them as a sort of "weapon," as it were.

Luckily, though, the aforementioned photograph had been taken in early afternoon, long before any of the above happened. In the great cyanic expanse of sky there was not a single cloud, and the sun seemed so bright that day that you found yourself squinting even when you were not looking at it directly. Despite the water being a bit chilly, the clarity of it couldn't have been nicer, and if you stood real still in it, the tiniest little fishies swam up and kissed your ankles. This was something that I loved to do, until Steve of course decided to disturb that peace and tranquility.

It was very typical, though, and I soon began to expect it every single time. I'd wade out into the water about ankle-deep, and not three minutes later, he'd jump in beside me, otherwise frightening all of the fishies away. Naturally, I was upset about this at first, but soon it just became one of his what I called Steve-isms, something that I had to take with a grain of salt and learn to live with.

Still, though, every time that he did that, Sodapop would shove him just enough to get his attention and tell him to cut it out, but by then it was already too late – the fishies were gone. Even so, I started to think that it was sort of cute, after a while. I'm pretty sure that it was his crazy little way of saying, _What about us? _

But it never did matter if it grew on me or not – it would almost always end with some major pushing and shoving, in which case I would almost always end up on my butt in the water. Steve was always about ten times stronger than I was, and both of them together turned me into a lost cause. Years of fights and rumbles had toughened them up quite a bit, and compared, I had practically no muscle strength. But that was okay, too.

Then Soda would help me to my feet and ask me if I was all right, and I'd say yeah, of course I was, and then I'd come right back and push _him _into the water. It was a little game that we had.

Once, though, I remember knowing right when Steve was going to disturb the peace, and I stuck my foot out and tripped him, causing him to lose his balance and fall right into the water next to me. Luckily, he didn't get hurt, so it was funny. If he had, however, I think I would have felt pretty damn guilty.

And then there was the time that I made the mistake of lowering myself into the water a bit so that I could get a better look at the fishies and the river life there, and both of them snuck up behind me and pushed me headfirst into it. I shrieked and flailed, trying to keep my balance, but that was to no avail, and rendered completely useless. Water went up my nose and I started crying.

They thought that it was funny at first, but I think they felt pretty bad about making me cry. They were always very protective of me and making me cry was one thing that they always tried _not _to do.

Still, those summers down at the beach were always the greatest. We had been going since I was about five, and every year brought some sort of new adventure. There was one summer where we established a sort of "spot," and no one was allowed there except for us. No one. This spot was always shady and cool, which was especially nice on the days that were unbearably humid and sweltering, the days that made you feel like shriveling up into a raisin. It was where we went when we'd had enough, when we finally realized that the sun and the day's activities had exhausted us beyond all measure.

It wasn't too far away from the rest of the group (my parents always insisted that we stay within view, even when we were quite old enough to look after ourselves), but it was far enough for us, so that we could just relax and not have to listen to "Are you _sure _you put on enough sun block?" every thirty seconds. It was nice.

We even made a sign for it, and now it really _was _"our spot." We found an old plank of wood that had somehow washed ashore and nailed it to a wooden post and stuck it in the sand. It kept falling over, though, and we had to keep devising new ways to make it stay up. That wasn't easy. It took us over an hour. The post that we used obviously wasn't sturdy enough and the sand wasn't thick enough to keep it there. When we finally managed to get it at just the right position and angle, I wrote, in a very terrible hand:

_As of June 6, 1963  
This spot officially belongs to  
Soda, Steve, & Eleanor  
All others will be prosecuted  
(and towed)_

It was barely legible, and the spelling wasn't anything to fuss over, but the point was, it was our spot, and that was that. Soda added the last line by himself. He knew that I didn't know what 'prosecuted' even meant, and that I only wrote it there because I had seen it on other signs in the past. Our parents got a little bit upset, though, because they feared that the authorities would find it and get us into trouble for posting a sign that had not been approved.

But that sign has been there ever since.

That photograph, though, had not been taken at our spot, because my mom didn't think we'd show up when the picture developed. The light and the shade just wouldn't work. So we sat out on the sand, near the water, and I had my transistor radio turned on next to me. The sunlight was direct, as was its reflection off of the sand, and vision was made difficult. It was so humid that day that the air had taken on a hazy quality, almost like you could reach out and feel it and grip it between your fingers.

After about a half hour of just sitting there, talking away, and laughing, my mother came over with her camera and told us to smile. They were playing Ray Charles on the radio. I remembered because he was always one of my favorites. The first time that I had ever heard him on the radio, I decided that I was going to play the piano just like him. He had such a talent for it, and it made me feel inferior.

So we smiled, I think, and my mom snapped the picture.

Now, looking back over it, I realize that she was exactly right. It really _does _capture the essence of our friendship in the most realistic and natural way. Soda, who had been on my right, and who always expressed such strong effervescence toward anything and everything, was grinning, and had thrown his arm around my shoulders. I, too, looked happy and very content with the world around me. Because the color of the photograph had faded so, the reddish undertone of my swimsuit had taken on a pallid, almost dry pink hue. It was a two-piece with a sort of gingham print and would have complemented the color of my hair just right, had it not faded.

Either way, the rest of me turned out okay. Long hair, bangs combed to the side, pink cat eye sunglasses perched atop my head, slightly well-endowed, bright smile. I looked pretty happy.

Steve was sitting on my left, and he had had a sort of half smile on his face, as if he were saying, _I really don't want to smile, but for the sake of my friends, maybe I will anyway. _He was almost smirking, but that was just like him. Just another one of his Steve-isms. He had been leaning into my arm, holding himself up with his hand so that he wouldn't lose his balance, but I think he did, just after my mom took the picture. He fell right across my lap and Soda's, causing the drink that I had been holding to slip right out of my hand, and otherwise soaking all of us. Though my mother wasn't too happy about that and made us get up and go rinse ourselves off in the river, we found it to be quite humorous.

And despite the sunburn that day, I think that that was probably my very favorite day at the beach.

xxx

**A/N: **Sorry if these first few chapters are a little tedious. It'll all come together in the end, though. :)

Also I hope Soda and Steve don't seem too out of character. I can't really picture them having a "spot" at the beach, either, but I think that with such a free-spirited sister, things even out.

Reviews are appreciated! Chapter Three coming soon...


	3. Three

**A/N: **I'm going back and editing all the chapters, so … warning: this is probably the lamest chapter in the whole story. Quite honestly you can skip it and it won't affect the outcome. The only reason I'm not deleting it is because it might throw people off. Actually, don't read it if you know what's good for you. I really hate it.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders, _"Ruby Tuesday," written by Keith Richards (supposedly co-written by Brian Jones) and performed by The Rolling Stones, or "At Last," written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren and performed by Glenn Miller.

---

**Chapter Three: **

" … _don't question why she needs to be so free / she'll tell you it's the only way to be … "_

I think I always wanted to take some sort of dancing lessons; I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The only thing that I didn't enjoy was when people tried to tell me how to do it. I never followed any style, or any set in stone choreography, which was probably why I never inquired. I liked twirling around the kitchen with the radio playing, or on the back porch on those lazy summer days when it wasn't too hot, when you could actually feel a breeze, feel it combing through your hair with free, able fingers.

I could feel it, every day with the door propped wide open. I could feel the gentle backbeat of the old wartime songs on the radio. I could feel the cool tiles beneath my feet as I twirled once and tried to copy the poise and balance of a ballerina, though failing miserably, I'm sure.

And I could feel the _this-is-me-trying-very-hard-not-to-laugh _stares from Soda and Steve as they watched, wondering what in the hell I was doing, and why. They knew better than to make any snide remarks, though. If they did, I would make them dance with me. Unfortunately for Soda, he made the mistake of doing just that. Maybe it wasn't so much of a mistake, though. I think he wanted to. He always liked anything that required physical activity, and I'm sure that dancing around the kitchen with his sister was no exception.

He didn't mind too much that it was music from the nineteen-forties, either. He usually seemed to enjoy making smart cracks about that, while I continuously insisted that I had very good taste in music. It may not have been the norm for our generation – this was stuff that our parents listened to during the Second World War, slightly over twenty years ago – but I liked it. And that was okay for me. I guess that it just wasn't okay for them.

"I feel like I'm at a USO party!" Soda said. I grinned.

"Yeah, in somebody's kitchen."

"Well, they could have had them there. You don't know."

"United Service Organizations? I don't think so. They went to other countries to entertain the soldiers. You know? Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope …"

"Well …" He was obviously trying to find some way to win this little battle. Simply mind games, that's all that it was. "People's kitchens could have been entertaining."

I shook my head, reaching over to turn up the volume on the radio a bit. "Sure, Soda. They very well could have been."

Steve laughed. "You guys are pathetic."

"Wow," I said, "kinda like you, Steve."

"Thanks. And just for that, if you weren't a girl, I'd beat the tar outta you for sayin' something like that."

"Ah, respect for women. That's good."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You said if I weren't a girl." I paused, thinking that if I let the rest hang, he'd figure it out by himself. But the sustained silence told me otherwise. "Obviously you're not going to hit a girl. Right?"

"I didn't mean all girls. I was talking about you. If _you _weren't a girl. You dig?"

I smiled. That was sweet! They did have a soft side after all. I might have been the only one that they showed that around, though, just because I wasn't the type of person that would go out and ruin their reputation. They trusted me. "I dig, and thank you. That was a very – "

"'Cause there's some girls I'd like to hit," he interrupted, and glanced at Soda. He stopped dancing with me long enough to acknowledge Steve's gaze, and I knew right away that he had been talking about Sandy. That was Soda's old girlfriend. They're not together anymore, though. Not since she went to live in Florida with her grandmother. That's what I heard. I don't know the whole story. I'm not sure I want to know, either. It was another one of those things where nobody would tell me anything, either because they didn't want to, or didn't have to, or it was just something that I didn't need to know about. All I know is that Soda was going to marry her, and when she said no and left, he was crushed. That all happened in the same week that we lost Johnny and Dally, too. It was real tough for him.

I didn't want to inquire about it this time, though, because I didn't want Soda to get upset. He always did when the subject was brought to the surface.

_At last, my love has come along _  
_My lonely days are over_  
_And life is like a song _

Glenn Miller's orchestra. I knew them anywhere. My dad listened to him. He had been in the military. Navy. He went to France. Or at least that's what he used to say. He always bragged about the little Eiffel Tower statue he got there, as a souvenir. He'd seen France! I have that little statue sitting in my windowsill now. Whenever I look at it, I think of him.

Soda grinned and let go of my hand. "Man, El, I'm not doin' that with you anymore. That really wore me out. I gotta sit down."

I laughed. "You? Worn out? I never thought I'd see the day."

He allowed himself to laugh, too, and otherwise quickly relieved the tension that had built up only moments before. He opened the fridge and grabbed himself a Coca Cola. "Believe it or not."

"Or not. Well, in that case, Steve, it's your turn, my dear."

He shook his head quickly. "No way in hell."

"C'mon, baby, you gotta learn to dance with me sometime."

To clear this up and out of the way, Steve and I had no romantic feelings toward one another. We just had pet names for each other, and the tone that we used them in was always playful and friendly. Because that's what we were. Friends. No more, no less. I liked it better the way it was, anyway. Boyfriends and girlfriends eventually break up, but friends – best friends, in our case – go on forever. It's just a fact. And I intended to keep it that way.

"Do I look like the kinda guy that _dances? _And to this shit?"

"Shit?" I said, my eyes widening. "I think you had better take that back."

"Or what? You'll make me dance with you a second time? Gosh, I'm _terrified." _

"Oh, no. That wouldn't be punishment enough." I pointed to Soda. "I'll make you dance with him."

Both of them looked at each other, a disgusted expression crossing their faces. I erupted in peals of laughter and leaned back against the refrigerator for support. One too many times I'd collapsed on the ground due to this kind of thing, usually induced by them instead of myself.

"You gotta be kidding me," Soda said. "I mean, I know we're buddies and all, but that's crazy talk!"

"You think I'd _actually _humiliate you guys like that?"

"Yes!" they exclaimed in unison, looking completely horrified with my suggestion.

"Well, you guys do enough to torture me throughout the day, so I figure I've gotta do my part, too. It's a mutual thing, y'know?"

"Real mutual," Steve said. "I say one thing and she just … I don't know. I don't know about you, El."

I smiled. "All in good fun. So how about that dance, huh?"

"With you, right?"

"Of course with me. Soda's just gonna have to wait his turn."

xxx

**A/N: **For obvious reasons I'm trying to learn more about the military, so if anybody has some useful information about that and would like to enlighten me, I would be very grateful.

Last night my brother's friend slept over and we watched _We Were Soldiers _and his friend knows a _lot _about the military and warfare and stuff, so I learned some things, but not enough. So again. Any information about that will probably suffice. I mostly know about the USO and stuff because my dad was in the Marines, a lot of other family members were or are in the military, went or are going to places, and my dad has this box set of CDs called _'The Entertainers of WWII' _so I figure that must be USO and stuff. So yeah.

Keep reviewing! Chapter Four coming soon. :)


	4. Four

**A/N: **Sorry for the delay. Thanks for the reviews. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Friday on My Mind," written by George Young and Harry Vanda, and performed by The Easybeats.

---

**Chapter Four: **

" … _Wednesday just don't go, Thursday goes too slow / I've got Friday on my mind … "_

We had a tradition, the three of us. Every Friday we went to the drive-in theater – weather permitting, of course.

This tradition started about two years ago, by my parents. They took my brothers and I every Friday to see a movie and Steve just tagged along, mostly because me and Soda were going.

And then the three of us took over this tradition last year, following the death of my parents. By then the boys had learned to drive, and I … well, I had to sit in the back. I always thought that this was kind of unfair, and made sure to complain about it every single time I got into the car with them. Of course, these complaints were not necessarily because I was upset, but instead for the sole purpose of seeing their reactions every time I demanded, "Do I _always _have to sit back here?"

Because I can tell you, after a while, they became very annoyed with that. And they didn't get annoyed with me too often, so that was saying something.

But I believe that was my whole purpose, to annoy them, and vice versa, because that's how it always was with us. We annoyed each other. We pretended to care, pretended to mind it and get angry about it, but I think secretly it was very much a natural part of our relationship as friends, and siblings, too. So maybe when they got annoyed with me for complaining, they were just faking it. I'm sure I'll never really know.

But so it proved to be, one Friday afternoon after school. I guess Soda must have had off that day, or something – he worked full time at the DX – because when Steve brought the car around (after making me wait ten minutes; I bet they were talking to girls) Soda had somehow appeared in the front passenger's seat. The school is not very far from our house so he probably just walked over.

Unless, of course … well, no. I'm pretty sure he had off that day. Either way, I was waiting ten whole minutes for them, and by the time they did bring the car around the front of the school to pick me up, I was so, well … lack of a better word, _annoyed _with them that you could practically see the steam emanating from my ears. Feeling the way I did, I simply had to give them grief about making me sit in the back _again. _

"So first you make me wait outside," I said, the minute I pulled open the door, "and then, I have to sit back here again. What is this?" Two-Bit was sitting back there, too. He was one of our gang, or at least what was left of it. He was always the wise guy, cracking jokes and making everybody laugh. He was a real piece of work and I got a big kick out of him.

"You shouldn't be sitting up front, anyway," Soda said. "It's not safe."

"Maybe you ought to take your own advice next time you decide to try and blow the doors off some other car. Speeding is unsafe too. I hope you know that."

He shook his head. "Look, Steve, we even get in trouble when we're trying to look out for the welfare of our girl here."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, please."

Steve looked through the rearview mirror at me. I contemplated returning that with a dirty look of my own, but decided against it. "Tell ya what, Eleanor," he said. "When you learn to drive, you sit up front as much as ya like. How 'bout that?"

"I just don't think it's fair." He mumbled something to himself and looked back at the road, and I glanced over at Two-Bit. "So where's your car today?"

"Broke," he told me, and then burst into peals of laughter for no apparent reason whatsoever. I guessed that that would be expected, at least from him. I sighed and decided against starting my weekend homework now, for as it was the car was already going fast, and pretty much any speed above fifty miles an hour terrified me (as did heights, spiders, and thunderstorms, sadly). That was why I avoided being in the car with Steve and Soda as much as possible, just because they seemed to believe that going over the speed limit was perfectly okay. I can honestly say that I have been involved in quite a few near-death experiences with them.

Unfortunately, though, I needed my ride home, and they were the only ones I knew that could give me one. I wasn't allowed to walk. That rule had been enforced almost as soon as we began getting involved with the whole Soc/greaser conflict. If I walked I could get jumped by the Socs, and being a girl, it could have been worse for me. So the ride home was crucial and imperative, and soon the sick-to-my-stomach feeling induced by the fast driving became as familiar to me as breathing.

"Eleanor, we are _talking _to you." Soda was waving his hand in front of my face, obviously trying to get my attention. I guess I'd slipped into a daydream.

"Oh, sorry. What now?"

He rolled his eyes. "We were wondering if we were still on for tonight."

"Tonight? What's – oh, Friday. Yeah, sure, I guess. I'm a little tired, though, so I probably won't be much fun."

"Like you ever are," Steve teased.

"Thanks. But, really. What are they showing tonight, anyway? Something good, I hope."

"Just so you know, Eleanor, it's not your turn to pick tonight. That was last week."

"I never said it _was _my turn. In fact, I think it's yours, isn't it?"

He shook his head. "Nope. It's Steve's."

"Really? I could have sworn it was yours."

"No, it goes Steve, then me, then you, then Steve, then me, then you, then – "

"Yeah," I said, "I get it. I just lost track, that's all. Do we even know what's playing?"

"Well," Steve began, "I saw one that was called _Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? _and I pick that one 'cause there's supposed to be a pretty girl in it."

"Figures," I mumbled. "I saw that one, too. Or at least I've seen advertisements for it. It looks good."

Soda grinned. "Pretty girl? I'm game."

"You guys obviously don't even care about the real message of the story, do you?"

"Message?" Steve turned back to glance at me, and I pointed forward, motioning for him to keep his eyes on the road. I wasn't about to allow him to be my cause of death. "You actually think we go to see the message? Man, El, you must be off your rocker."

"Yeah, I must be." I paused. "Do you guys even know what's going on with civil rights, and stuff? Because that's what that movie deals with: a white girl and a black guy going together, and their parents having a problem with it. Now, quite honestly, I find absolutely nothing wrong with that, but if you guys are gonna sit there the whole time and drool over that chick like a she's a piece of meat, then I will be very content to go and watch the movie by myself."

"I think it means that," Soda said quietly. They always had this weird habit of trying to be all funny by referring to me as 'it,' especially when I was upset with them. It usually got me laughing, and I'd no longer be angry. It almost worked this time. Almost.

"I do mean it," I said. "And I will go sit by myself, if I have to."

True, it would break the tradition in a way, but did I really want to sit in the car with them while they doted on some actress? Not really.

I could understand it, though. I could never deny that there were some actors and musicians that I thought were pretty good-looking, but it just got old after a while, and I didn't dwell on the subject like they did.

"No," Soda said, "you can't do that. You'll ruin everything."

See? It's just like I'd said. Sitting by oneself would otherwise disrupt the order and the general idea of our tradition, and that would be that. No more tradition. Or at least, it wouldn't be quite the same. It was a rule of sorts.

"Well," I declared, "you're not the boss of me."

This petty, childish game had carried well into our teens, but it worked. As did _I know you are, but what am I? _when we resorted to calling each other names. It was amazing that both phrases worked so well, because there was nothing that you could say back to them.

"Actually, I am. I'm older than you."

Except for that.

"Yeah," I laughed. "By ten months."

"Ten months is a lot. That's almost a year."

"'Almost' being the key word there."

"So wait, you guys are going to the movies, right?" Two-Bit wondered. It was kind of an odd question to ask, seeing as we were not exactly on the subject of the movie any longer, but I nodded, anyway. "Can I go?"

"No," the three of us said in unison. We weren't trying to be mean – it was just kind of _our _tradition, that's all. Besides, Two-Bit didn't seem fazed at all by our answer. He just laughed and said that he thought it was funny that we all sometimes said the same things at the same time, and I knew that he probably had other plans on the agenda tonight as it was. So it didn't make much difference.

We couldn't help including people sometimes, though. There were some occasions when Ponyboy and Johnny came with us, and after that whole thing with him and Dally, I managed to include my brother in a lot of the things we did. I didn't want him to feel left out or anything like that. Soda didn't mind this – he and Pony had a close relationship, too, as brothers – but Steve didn't like it very much. I just told Pony not to let this bother him, though, because even I had to admit that Steve could be a real asshole sometimes. That went without question.

Nobody spoke much the remainder of the ride home, and aside from the radio and the sounds of other cars, all was quiet. Maybe nobody felt like talking, which was kind of strange. We always had been a talkative bunch, and with me being the most opinionated, our conversations sometimes went on forever. I don't know why everyone was so quiet this time.

That evening, we actually got to the drive-in a bit early. There were only about seven other cars there already and so we managed to get a really good parking spot. Since it was already early spring, the days lasted longer, and it wouldn't be dark for a while yet. This probably explained the pile of magazines in the back seat. Soda and Steve didn't really read magazines much, unless they were about cars, but I did. Mostly they were things like _Newsweek _and _Time _and _Life. _Some of the articles were really interesting, and besides, my social studies teacher loved talking about current events, and she knew that I was sort of outgoing and enjoyed expressing my opinion, and so a majority of the time she picked me when she asked a question.

Some of the current events made me very upset – for example, that whole thing with civil rights, and that war in Vietnam – and I didn't normally like talking about them, but because I always had a lot to say and a lot of my own ideas about it, I read about them because I didn't want to sound stupid, or completely unaware of the problems that were affecting our generation.

"So," I said. "Which one of us is going to get the provisions?"

Every week one of the three of us was elected to go to the concession stand. It was not a very popular job, because while they were gone, the other two would spend that lot of time talking about them, and the knowledge of not being there while the other two were gossiping away was not very pleasant.

"Because I'm not going," I added, following a moment of silence.

"Me either," Soda declared. We both looked at Steve. "Guess that leaves you, buddy."

"Me? No way."

"You've gotten out of going for three weeks now," I told him. "I think it's definitely your turn."

He frowned and started to push open the door. "If you guys make me miss this movie …" Letting the rest hang, he gave the door a good, solid slam before starting toward the concession stand.

We always had a good time at the movies. There were always jokes and laughter and watching the couples make out in the car next to us. That was usually entertaining, unless they caught on to our staring and giggling.

And then there were the times – especially during the more scary movies – when the boys tried to scare the living crap out of me. It usually worked, too. Like this one time when we went and saw _The Birds, _and Steve thought that it would be hysterical to tap me on the shoulder during the more frightening part. He did so, and I jumped and screamed a little, and the extra large popcorn that I was holding went everywhere, creating a huge mess, and he and Soda just thought that that was the funniest thing ever.

Granted, this was at my expense, of course, which they loved even more.

But needless to say, I got payback. After the initial shock of the moment had worn off, I threw what was left of that extra large popcorn back in his face – and I don't only mean the popcorn, I just pitched the whole bucket at him – and told him that if he ever did that to me again I'd make his life a living hell.

Well, this caused even more laughter.

"That's the best you got?" Soda said. I thought he was going to die. His face was red and I thought he'd never stop laughing. "Why don't ya give him a bloody nose or a black eye or somethin'? That's what _I _would have done."

"Thanks, man," said Steve, wiping popcorn from his jeans onto the floor, where it made an even bigger mess. God, this would be hell to clean up.

I smiled to myself, though, listening as the speakers seemed to vibrate with the sound of screeching birds. "There's always next time."

xxx

**A/N: **Sorry if that was longer than usual! I try to keep the chapters short, sweet, and to the point, but I had a bit of writer's block this week and it came out longer than I'd hoped. Oh, well.

Reviews are appreciated!


	5. Five

**A/N: **Thank you for all the reviews! And here is Chapter Five. Be forewarned that this may be a bit of a tearjerker, that is if the Kennedy assassination upsets you a lot. (Don't worry, all her little memories tie in later in the story.)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders, _"No Expectations," written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and performed by The Rolling Stones, or "Blue on Blue" by Bobby Vinton (I'm not certain about whom this was written by).

---

**Chapter Five: **

" … _but never in my sweet, short life / have I felt like this before … "_

The Kennedy assassination was probably the worst thing that could have ever happened to this country.

After that disastrous day, it was as if the United States had spun violently into madness. The world seemed to rip apart, tearing at the seams and unraveling at our fingertips.

I could remember that day, clear as if it had happened only yesterday. I'm sure that that is the most cliché statement in the world, but for any American citizen old enough to remember, it's so incredibly true. It's so vivid because it was so unexpected, something that we, as a country, had never dared to dream would ever happen.

But we do tend to take things for granted, don't we?

Ten years from then it would be in books. I knew that. It would become an unforgettable piece of American history, a definite _Where were you when… ? _

Well, I was in school. Fifth period. I had just turned twelve in July, which would have put me in the seventh grade. I remember that I sat up front, near the door, next to a real snotty, stuck-up girl named Barbara. The benefit to this seating arrangement, however, was that Soda and Steve were within perfect viewing range, being only in the classroom across the hall. They were in eighth grade at the time.

I loved it when they would randomly turn around and wave at me. I would smile and wave back and giggle a little, which in turn would earn me a vexed reprimand from the teacher for disrupting the class and a scathing glare from Barbara just basically for existing. She, at that age, probably thought that I was the lowest form of life on earth, but it didn't matter. I loved every minute of that little game.

It was on that day, however – November 22, 1963 – that another teacher, frantic and somber all at once, stepped into the room and told our teacher something which seemed to upset her terribly, for she allowed her eyes to close and made the Sign of the Cross on herself. You weren't really permitted to talk about or express religion in school, unless you went to a private school or something, but she did it anyway, then. That gesture and the crucifix around her neck told me that she must have been a devout Catholic. Our family were Catholics, too. We went to church almost every Sunday and holy days.

I leaned over and tapped Barbara on the shoulder. "What's going on?"

"If you be quiet, we'll find out," she snapped. I was so tempted to retort, but given the current circumstances, I decided against it.

"Children, there is terrible news," our teacher, Mrs. O'Brien, said. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, wavering on her feet a bit. The eager, awaiting silence was almost deafening. "The President has been shot."

Immediately there was soft chatter and shocked gasps. My hand flew to my mouth and I looked around, trying to grasp for an answer. Barbara glanced at me, forgetting her silly attitude for a moment, before turning to face her friend in the desk behind her. The friend seemed like a more compassionate person, for her chubby face was splotchy and her sad eyes were shiny with tears.

I was crying, too, I realized. I could feel the tears slide down my cheeks one after the other, could taste their salty flavor as they slid past my lips and onto my tongue. They kept coming and it seemed useless to wipe them away.

Suddenly a boy named Jake Wilson stood up, looking very confused. "The president of _what?" _

The room fell into a hush. Was he _blind? _Didn't he know _anything? _Didn't he watch the news? Didn't he –

"Jacob, take a seat, please," Mrs. O'Brien stated simply, though you could easily tell that that question had angered her quite a bit.

But in a way it made sense, almost. As seventh graders we weren't expected to know _that _much about the government quite yet, and so a statement like _the President's been shot _could have been easily misinterpreted or misunderstood. I could sort of see where he got off asking that, but _still. _

I definitely knew who President Kennedy was, and even though I could understand why Jake had said that, I was still angry. I thought everyone in America knew who he was. I'd been told that he'd stopped the Russians from attacking us, had basically prevented a third World War from happening. That took bravery, and knowledge, and guts. I may have been only twelve, but I knew the extent of that and I admired him for it, and for his courage.

And now he was _shot? _I was very mixed up about all of it and had so many questions that I wished I could ask. Questions that, I would later learn, were virtually impossible to answer.

At school there was nothing to do, nothing to say. Who wanted to learn about textiles and the printing press after hearing about this? I think everyone realized that, and sent us all home to be with our families. That seemed like the best choice. I was scared, anyway, and couldn't think of anywhere I'd rather be than safe at home with my brothers and my mom and dad. The Russians couldn't get us there, could they?

There was something in the atmosphere that I didn't like, when they let us leave. Something that told me that we were never going to be the same again. President Kennedy had been such a good leader, such a hero, and I think that just about every single person in this country admired him. Nowadays I believe that, had he lived, he could have stopped Vietnam, too. Maybe not so much within the country, but he could have stopped the continuous shipping out of troops. We all knew they didn't need to be there. It was never our war.

I knew that the innocence of the Fifties had died with Kennedy. That decade was not my generation, and I was young then, so I don't remember much except for playing outside with Soda and Steve and going to the beach in the summer. And the fact that those days were so simple. Everyone was nice to each other. There were no problems, seemingly. You'd think that after this event people would have been a little more compassionate towards one another, but instead it was just the opposite. After he died, things went to Hell.

I met Soda and Steve in the hallway, and we didn't speak to each other for a long time. What could we say? There was nothing, nothing that could even begin to explain how we felt about it. Soda's usual happy, reckless expression wasn't present, and that worried and frightened me all at once. If _he _wasn't happy, then something was for sure, without a doubt, and most definitely wrong.

"What's gonna happen?" I wondered. I could hardly believe that I was actually able to speak, considering I could feel the break in my voice. My throat was dry and my tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of my mouth. I knew that I needed water, if I ever wanted to speak again, but it was the last thing on my mind at that particular moment.

Soda shook his head, telling me that he didn't know, and took my hand. "Come on," he said. "Let's go find Pony."

We walked slowly, unaware of the presence of the other kids and teachers around us just as they passed us by without a second glance. I looked up at Steve. He looked angry, but he kind of always looked that way, so it was a little bit hard to tell what he thought about all of this. He knew who Kennedy was, but he wasn't into politics that much and wasn't the type of guy that expressed his opinion about it.

The three of us met up with Ponyboy near the front of the school. He looked just as scared and confused as we felt. And then we overheard some of the teachers saying that the Russians had a better chance at attacking us now, since our guard was down, and we decided to beat it out of there. That wasn't something that we needed to hear, wasn't something that we were ready for. Wasn't America supposed to be a safe place?

We walked home and took our time. It was long and we all seemed to be in some sort of trance. I wasn't crying, much to my astonishment. I thought I would be sobbing by then. I was such a sap and cried about almost everything, or at least I did when I was little, but now it was like I just _couldn't. _I'm sure eventually everybody would approach it in their own way. I was sure that my mother was having a mental breakdown. This was obviously not something that occurred on a daily basis.

It was late fall and there was a distinct chill in the air, crisp and biting, giving forth teases of the receding autumn season and a promise of winter. I pulled my coat tighter around myself but shivered anyway. It'd be December soon, and coats didn't exactly work miracles. Soda must have realized that I was cold, for he let go of my hand, and instead slipped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against him protectively. Ten months wasn't much, yes, but it was enough to give him that safeguarding older brother status. Quite honestly, I enjoyed it; it was nice feeling protected.

But that day it didn't matter. All I wanted was to get home and get the facts. We didn't know anything right now. All we knew was that the President had been shot and the Russians were going to attack us. That part wasn't exactly truth, but something thereabouts had been overheard, and I'm sure, being quite clueless and not very worldly at the time, that we took it and twisted it into something completely different.

When we got home, my mother hardly looked up from the television. The look in her eyes was pure, unadulterated fear. You didn't see adults afraid of things very often, but when you did, you knew that there was definitely something to worry about. Except for the time when Soda was jumping on Mom and Dad's bed and fell off and nearly broke his neck, I didn't think I'd ever seen her so terrified in all of my twelve years.

Darry had been home for maybe ten minutes already. That was my guess, anyway. He was already in high school, and because the high school was so close to our house, he could walk home and be there in no time at all. He didn't look afraid. He just looked very angry and upset.

"Mommy?" I said, and she glanced at me and motioned for me to join her where she was sitting on the floor. I looked up at Soda and Pony and Steve, but they didn't meet my gaze. They were too busy staring at the television with the most horrified expressions on their faces. I wondered why, and so I followed their stare to the source and quickly realized that they were replaying what had happened to Kennedy. Why were they showing this on _national television? _

It was horrible. There was a whole motorcade. Where was it … Texas? I didn't know for sure. I thought I'd heard the guy say Texas. It's hard to believe that that was only one state below us, but I realized that that sounded a bit selfish, and instead I put myself in the shoes of those who were actually standing there, watching it all happen.

And it all happened so fast. One minute he was waving at the camera and the next minute the whole top half of his head was lying in his wife's lap. We had a black-and-white television, so it wasn't very good quality, but somehow we knew. We could see it and we knew. I saw one girl there turn away quickly, and I did the same. I covered my eyes with my hands and tried to push that grotesque image out of my mind, but it wouldn't leave, and I knew at that moment that that would stay burned in my memory for the rest of my life.

How could anybody let this happen? How could _God _let this happen? Was he really as merciful and forgiving as they taught us at church? If he was, would he have allowed this catastrophe to occur?

That's when I finally began crying. I just let myself collapse against my brothers and sobbed. I wasn't aware of much else around me, except for the fact that Soda and Pony were attempting to console me while simultaneously keeping a close eye on the television. They were very disturbed, too. I knew that. We all were. I don't know why it hit me as hard as it did. My mom came over and pulled me into an embrace and it didn't take me very long to realize that she was crying, too.

My God, I thought to myself. The world really _has _gone mad.

The next few days were very, very surreal. I could hardly grasp what was happening because everything had happened so quickly. The whole country seemed to be in mourning and the days following the assassination were spent watching the funeral. I'm sure no words could describe the grief that the Kennedy family was going through, and I felt so badly for Mrs. Kennedy, and poor little Caroline and John-John. No, America was never going to forget this. Definitely not.

One night I remember lying in my bed, thinking. I was twelve years old and I had seen the President of the United States of America get shot in the head. What did it all mean? Later they'd shown the man who shot Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, getting shot himself by a man named Jack Ruby – all right there in front of us on the television. Something just wasn't right.

That night I remember wanting to actually talk about it. I shared a room with Soda and Pony and I hoped that they were still awake. So I sat up on my elbow and stared into the darkness for a moment. The radio was on low, barely audible.

"Hey, you guys?" I said at last. "Do _you _know why they shot him?"

Soda said, "Go to sleep, El," just at the same time as Pony said, "No."

I bit my lip. I wasn't giving up just yet. "Do Mom and Dad know?"

There was a hesitation. I knew they hadn't fallen asleep. They knew better. Once I began questioning things, it could be a while before I finally let the matter drop. "No," Sodapop said at last. "They don't."

If my own parents didn't know why this had happened, then I didn't think anybody did.

"What about the Russians?" I heard Ponyboy ask. I nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, are they gonna attack us?"

"I don't know, guys," Soda replied, and I could almost feel the tired annoyance and the edge in his voice. "Go to sleep, will ya?"

I sighed and rolled over onto my back, closed my eyes. The radio was on so low, but the rest of the world seemed so quiet that I could hear it perfectly.

_Blue on blue, heartache on heartache  
Blue on blue, now that we are through … _

"I heard they have lasers," Pony said.

"Yeah," I said. "I heard that, too. It said on the news. They put them in space."

"How do they get up there?"

"Rocket ships, probably."

"What if they blow up the planet?" he wondered anxiously. I bit my lip. I had to wonder, too, what they did with those things. Obviously they wouldn't put them in space if they didn't have a reason for putting them up there to begin with.

"Oh, they won't blow up the _planet," _I said at last. "They just wanna blow up this country."

"What for?"

"They don't like us."

"Oh." He was quiet for a while. I thought maybe he had fallen asleep. "Why not?"

I sighed and rolled over to face the window. Overhead the street lamp created a distinct semi-circular shape on the pavement below. It coupled with the moonlight, and there was a sort of milky iridescence penetrating the atmosphere. Suddenly I was tired. "I don't know," I said, and it was the truth. I really _didn't _know.

"Do they think we're a bad country?"

"They're jealous," I explained, "because we have more money than them."

"How do _you_ know?"

The truth was, I didn't know that, either, but it seemed like a logical explanation as to why any country was not exactly in our favor. Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I reached up and wiped the chilly moisture from the window. The street light was dim and now its glow seemed almost eerie.

"I … well," I started, but couldn't find the right words to explain how the idea had lodged itself in my brain. "It's just like … I don't know. That's just what it seems like."

But I didn't know. And from that day forward, it seemed as though all of America didn't know. I could only hope that things would change, and soon.

xxx

**A/N: **I just wanted to say that I have absolutely nothing against Russians or non-Catholics. I'm Catholic myself and hopefully Eleanor's little schpiel about religion back there didn't offend anybody. I worry often about offending people, so I apologize if it did.

Reviews are appreciated!


	6. Six

**A/N: **Sorry for the wait. School tried to murder me this week. D:

Anyway, here's Chapter Six.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," a traditional English ballad performed by Simon and Garfunkel, with "Canticle" noted as an original counterpoint written by Paul Simon.

---

**Chapter Six: **

" … _and to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten … "_

The month of April was not supposed to have highs in the seventies. That wasn't supposed to be until June. But that's what it was that week. When I woke up Monday morning, it was already sixty-four degrees outside. I kept my bedroom window open each day after that, and nights, too, and by noon on Wednesday it had reached about seventy-five. It was quite unusual, for the middle of April, but I loved it.

On Friday morning it seemed to have cooled down a bit, but when I turned on the radio they said that it'd be essentially the same: seventy-five and sunny. And then they started talking about Vietnam, so I turned it off. I didn't know about anybody else, but I listened to the radio for the music, not for the latest body count.

That morning I had Corn Flakes, even though I hardly ever ate breakfast. It just never sat right with me, and so I usually waited until lunch to eat. I never did have a very strong stomach; I'd had the stomach flu about six times in almost sixteen years and I was positive that I would get it again before my life was over.

"Eleanor, you better be up now!" Darry yelled from the kitchen. God, I thought. Here we go.

"Well," I called back, "I'm alive."

Maybe not _awake _fully, but alive nonetheless.

"You're gonna be late for school," he warned.

Knowing that that was only a threat and not an actual fact, I went on attempting to pull some of my hair back in a barrette. I became too impatient after a while, though, and found that standing in front of a mirror where I couldn't even see the back of my head anyway wasn't doing me any good, and so I started for the kitchen. Walking and trying to fix my hair simultaneously didn't prove to be very efficient, either, but in a mirror I felt as if I were doing it all backwards, and it made my head spin.

Usually I just wore my hair down, but occasionally I'd wear a barrette, like I had just put in, or a headband. Setting it was too much of hassle and when – rather, _if _I ever did that, it was for special occasions only, and that really wasn't very often.

"Hi, Eleanor," Soda said. "Do you want some eggs?"

"No, thanks. I'm gonna make some cereal. Good morning." I smiled and made a show of counting only four heads. "Well, where is Stevie today? Shouldn't he be here by now?"

"Probably," said Soda. "But he's not."

"Yes, I can see that." I leaned back against the refrigerator with my little bowl of cereal and carefully pushed a spoonful of it into my mouth. "I hope he doesn't make me late today."

Darry looked upset, but about what, I couldn't imagine. "Would it kill ya to sit down and eat?"

"I don't think so. Why?"

"Very funny. I just don't want ya to spill that."

"I won't. I'm not five."

"Close enough," Two-Bit joked.

"You know, I could dump this over your head - "

"_Eleanor." _

" – But I won't, because if I do, I'll probably get in huge trouble. So consider yourself lucky." When I had finished, I set the bowl in the sink and walked over to the back door, propping it open to let the breeze and the sunshine in. It was such a nice day, and that seemed like an understatement. I never could figure out why people said that they hated spring and loved winter. It was such a beautiful time of the year. Everything was in full bloom – the flowers, the trees, the weather.

The whole world seemed to be returning to life, as well. Winter was such a grey season and the sun only seemed to rejuvenate all that it shined upon. The weather was so delightful and it made me smile.

But of course, Steve decided to come in the back door that day, and otherwise scared the living daylights out of me when he so suddenly appeared on the opposite side of the screen. I nearly had a coronary, because it's not as if we ever expected him to come in that way. He usually came in the front. I guess that he just figured we'd all be in the kitchen.

"Oh! Hi, Eleanor!" he said, very nonchalant. He let himself in and pushed past me, making himself right at home. "Beautiful day, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said slowly. "Very nice."

Soda sat down at the table with some eggs that he and Ponyboy were sharing. Two-Bit helped himself. Darry had left the room to finish getting ready for work. "You drove, right?"

Steve shook his head. "Nope. Thought it'd be a nice day for a walk."

"That doesn't really sound like you," I observed.

He grinned. "Sounds like you, though. Hey, what's this?" He lifted my unfinished bowl of cereal out of the sink. "You gonna finish this, El?"

"Uh, probably not."

"Great. I'm eatin' it, then."

I grimaced. "Steve, my mouth was on that."

He glanced down at the spoon, and then back over at me, and shrugged. "Yeah. So?"

"So that's a little bit disgusting. You don't know where my mouth has been."

"You don't know where mine's been, either," he conceded.

That was a disturbing thought. "Look, Soda made eggs. Why don't you eat those, instead?"

"'Cause your choice in cereal is better."

"Oh, such love. What do I do to deserve it?"

He laughed and shook his head. "So can I eat this?"

"Why do you need my permission?"

"Because you made a big fuss about it!" he exclaimed. "That's why."

"Well, I'm sorry, but it just seems a little gross, that's all."

He looked thoughtful, which kind of surprised me. "But we're friends, aren't we?"

"Yeah, we're friends," I said, wondering uneasily just exactly what he had meant by that inquiry. "But there are limits, Steve. You're talking about sharing … _germs _here. I mean, that's just - "

"El, I think ya made your point," Soda said.

Well, one of us had to be the peacemaker.

"Yeah, I think ya did," Steve snapped. He started for the living room, where the television awaited. "An' I'm eating this anyway!"

"Okay, but if I have some sort of undiagnosed disease – "

"You don't!" he and Soda declared in unison. Two-Bit and Ponyboy started laughing and I think that Two-Bit nearly fell out of his chair. Glory, it wasn't _that _funny.

"All I was gonna say was, 'Don't come crying to me.' My goodness."

So, okay, I admit it. I was known to be a bit of a hypochondriac from time to time, but someone had to maintain at least a _decent _reputation around here.

When school was over for the afternoon, I couldn't have been more overjoyed to be outside. It was much too lovely a day to waste inside of that staid old building. It didn't even faze me that the Socs were appraising me with the most degrading glares as I descended the steps at the front of the school. I was too focused on the sky – immaculate and blue and sparkling – and the sun and the trees and the feel of the air, that I hardly noticed them.

They were ignorant, anyway. Who needed 'em? I was a nice girl. The gist of them were too stuck-up and ignorant to see that.

I waited at the foot of the steps for Ponyboy and when he showed up we walked together to the DX station to meet Soda and Steve. Steve usually only worked part-time, but I guess that that day he decided not to, because I didn't recall seeing him at school. Soda worked full-time because he dropped out of school after Mama and Daddy passed away, to help Darry out with the bills and taxes and things like that. Though there was a wealth of sacrifice involved, it wasn't my favorite topic.

"So, didn't you have a test today, or something?" I asked after a while.

"No, I thought you did."

"Yeah, I did. Biology." I wrinkled my nose at the mere thought of it. I despised biology, or basically anything to do with science, come to that. I liked history better. "I just thought you did, too."

"Oh," he said shortly. "Well, how d'you think ya did?"

"Probably not so hot," I admitted. "But please don't tell Darry. He'll skin me alive with a machete, for sure."

Pony laughed. "That's a little extreme, Eleanor."

"Well, he probably will. Or he'll try and find some way to gouge my eyes out, and - "

"I think the worst he can do is ground you."

"Not if he doesn't find out," I said. "Which he won't."

He punched my shoulder playfully. "I ain't tellin'. You guys goin' to the movies tonight?"

My hand flew to my mouth. "Is it Friday already?"

"Yeah. What'd you think it was?"

"I don't know," I said. "I completely forgot. I don't even know."

We hadn't even discussed going to the movies that week, so it was difficult to determine whether we'd be going, or not at all.

Somebody sped by in a Cadillac Fleetwood with their radio blasting. I smiled. That had to be nice sometimes.

"I'm kinda glad Steve didn't take his car today," Pony said, speaking my exact thoughts. "I like walking."

"I like walking, too," I agreed. "Good exercise. Oh, wait a second."

I stooped next to a fence and pulled about five or six long-stemmed dandelions from the ground in which they had been embedded. I kept my hands busy tying them together for the next few minutes as we walked, and soon I had fashioned a sort of crown for my hair.

"Voila," I said. "How do I look?"

"Like you belong in San Francisco," Ponyboy said with a good-natured grin. San Francisco was said to be the hot spot for hippies and flower children. They hung out at a place called the Haight-Ashbury district, and burned incense and took acid trips and wore vibrant, brightly-colored clothing, or so I'd heard. This year, after all, was supposedly the 'Summer of Love.'

"Is that a compliment?" I wondered.

"Sure," he said, "as long as you're not doing drugs."

"Yeah, about that …" He shot me a wild expression. I laughed. "I'm kidding! Of course I don't do drugs. That's bad."

"But I thought you smoked, too."

"Well, I've had a couple cigarettes before. Who hasn't? But it's not like I'm addicted. I hate them, actually, if you want to know the truth."

"I've been trying to cut back," he told me.

"That's good. I'm glad."

"Hey, the big sister approves."

I laughed and adjusted my flower crown. "That she does."

I recognized the familiar stench of gasoline mixed with grease and … well, cologne, actually, when we got to the DX. That wasn't so familiar. It was because there was a stocky businessman at one of the gas pumps cleaning off his windshield. He wore a stiff grey suit and drove a fancy black car. I couldn't tell what it was from the front, but it looked sort of like a Ford Club Coupe. I hadn't ever been as savvy with cars as Soda and Steve, but I could name some.

"Hello," I said as politely as I could. It was a nice thing to do. I didn't want to be rude. Mama and Daddy always warned us never to talk to strangers, but I didn't think that this guy was about to offer us any candy.

In fact, he didn't even do anything. He merely grunted and went about his business. That was a bit cold. It wasn't that difficult to say hi to someone.

"So much for that," Ponyboy said.

"Yeah. That's the last time _I _ever try to be nice to someone."

The guy was gone about thirty seconds later.

Inside there was a group of about four or five girls all gathered around Soda at the counter, and he seemed to be enjoying their undivided attention. He was busy flirting with them – or maybe it was the other way around – but either way it looked as if there was a lot of eye-batting and giggling.

"Oh, dear Lord," I said.

"What?"

I pointed to the counter. "Our Casanova is at it again."

We both laughed and this got his attention right away. He grinned and waved, a gesture I acknowledged with a nod, and Pony headed right over to get some money for a Coke. The girls didn't seem very interested in our presence there, but that was fine with me. They were just silly little tarts, in my opinion, who happened to be infatuated with my handsome brother. Soda was merely humoring them.

Steve must have known we were there, too, because after a moment he appeared in the open doorway that led to the "garage," as he called it – in reality it was just a small carport where he fixed the cars, nothing too fancy. He was always very adept in repairing malfunctioning or faulty vehicles, though, I will admit, and he tended to get very cocky about it. That wasn't so bad, though, because he got the job done.

He must have been working on an especially tough one that day, though, because his hands were almost completely covered in oil and grease and he had stains all over his shirt and his jeans – and his face, too, now that I thought about it. But that didn't seem to bother him. He just came over to me and slung his arm over my shoulders.

"So, how was school?" he wondered.

"Oh, fine," I said. "I wish you wouldn't do that."

"Do what?"

"Your hands are all greasy. You think I want that all over my clothes? It'll _never _come out."

"El, you're such a girl."

I sighed. "I just don't like getting that stuff all over me, you know? Maybe you should go wipe your hands off or something."

So he wiped his hand across my cheek. I was furious. Normally I was never high-maintenance about anything, but I did not like feeling as if I were unclean.

"Oh, my God! Steve! I cannot believe you just did that!"

"You said to wipe my hands off!"

"Not on me, you dunderhead!"

He grinned. Suddenly I wasn't angry anymore. He and Soda both had that odd power over me. "Hey, I like that word."

"Hey, thanks."

"Didn't work, though."

"Oh. That's a drag, isn't it?"

"Yeah, you're not very good at insults, El."

I attempted wiping the grease off my face with my own hand, but it wasn't working very well. I'd probably need soap and water, or maybe just a good shower. "I know," I said, "but I try."

"You want a rag, or something?"

"No, I'll deal with it later. Where is your self-control?"

"All right, get over it," he said. "I know you're not angry anymore."

"Fine. But if you ever think about doing something like that to me again – "

"I know, I know. Don't."

"Right. Now, where is that brother of mine?"

He laughed. "Which one?"

"Oh, that's right. I have several of those, don't I? Well, then, the middle one."

"Oh, well, uh" – Steve jerked his thumb in the direction of the counter – "I think he's a little tied up right now."

"I don't. Watch this." Forgetting that he was still covered in grease and God knew what else, I shoved my English book into his arms and wandered over to where Soda was behind the counter and stood on my tip-toes and gave him a kiss on the cheek. I may have already been five-eight, God help me, but he still always seemed to have about two or three inches advantage over me.

The girls were simply green with envy. Sometimes it just wasn't obvious that we were only siblings. My hair was much darker. We had similar eyes, though.

"It really isn't what it looks like," Soda said, tossing me a _what in the hell? _expression. I just flashed him a cheesy smile.

"Yeah," I said. "He's my sister … I mean – "

"And the dynamic duo does it again," Steve quipped.

No longer interested in where our conversation was going, the girls went back to flirting, as did Soda, and I picked up an empty Coke can and threw it at Steve. It hit him in the back and I laughed.

"Don't forget, my love, that you're one-third of the 'dynamic duo,' too," I said.

"Then it's not a duo anymore, is it?" He picked up the can and tossed it into a nearby wastebasket.

"Exactly. Dynamic trio would be more appropriate."

"Are you kidding? I voted you off the island a million years ago."

That's what got me wondering if the three of us would never _not _be friends anymore, if something would happen eventually and we'd go our separate ways. I hoped not. It had already felt like a million years, and that's just not something that you can let go of.

"Like I'd ever let you do that," I retorted. "Are we leaving soon?"

We were. I was glad. It had been a long day. The whole week had worn me out completely and I was glad for the weekend. I made a mental note to ask Soda and Steve if we were still going to the movies.

At home Steve didn't stay very long. He just dropped us off and then left again, saying that he "had to do something." I didn't want to know.

Knowing him, however, he'd be back.

"El, grab the mail, will ya?" Soda called over his shoulder. He and Ponyboy were halfway inside, whereas I had lagged behind a bit.

"Yeah," I said, "I got it."

Because I didn't get anything in the mail very much, I never really took much time to look through it. I normally just left it on the table, where Darry and Soda would sift through it later. The gist of it was bills and things like that, things that I wouldn't have to worry about until I was older.

I was about to do just that, too, when I got inside but Soda was faster and snatched it out of my hand. "Let's see, what do we got here?"

"Probably nothing of importance," I said. "Hi, Two-Bit."

"Oh, hi, Eleanor." He was stretched out on the couch, watching television. He really took advantage of the weekend. "How was school?"

"Tiring," I conceded. "I don't think it's – hey, Soda, what's the matter?"

He had opened one of the envelopes and was staring blankly at the paper inside. I couldn't figure out why he looked so stricken. Ponyboy was reading over his shoulder and soon he adopted the exact same expression. I did that, too, when I was worried or upset. I didn't even know that I did it until I saw my brothers doing it, and it just seemed so familiar, like looking into a mirror, or something.

I wondered if the letter was from Sandy, but I couldn't maintain that, because the paper looked way too professional. Except for the deliberate folds to fit it inside the envelope, it wasn't crinkled or mangled in any way.

"What is it?" I wondered again, my eyes narrowed. Two-Bit noticed that something was wrong, as well, and he sat up and looked between me and Soda.

"It's … I – " He was about to continue, but suddenly the screen door flew open and Steve came in, holding what looked like the exact same letter. My stomach churned violently. The odd sensation that was slowly coursing through me was very unnerving.

"What is going on?" I demanded. "What is that?"

Wordlessly, Steve handed me his letter. I barely had to read it in full to know what it was. Merely skimming the page told me everything. Uncle Sam wanted them. It said something else about basic training.

It was a draft notice. They were drafting him. And they were drafting my brother, too.

"When?" I asked, amazed that my voice had not completely withered away.

"Right after school's out," Steve told me. "I'll be eighteen by then."

"But he's not – " My hand shook and caused me to drop the letter. Steve picked it up and glanced over it once more, shaking his head simultaneously. "Soda won't be eighteen until after the summer."

"Yeah, but I dropped out," he reminded me. "Guess they figure as long as I ain't in school anymore …"

I couldn't understand it. I couldn't even begin to fathom why the Army wanted Soda and Steve, of all people. I was very upset by this and, so much, in fact, that for some reason, I was blaming it on them. Not the Army, or Vietnam, or our own country, for that matter. In my head it was their fault that they'd gotten drafted, their fault our country was involved in something that was not even our problem to begin with. In my head they were the goody-goody Communists who had started it all.

And it seemed odd to me that they would both get their draft notices on the same day, but I was too broken up to consider that.

I covered my ears with my hands. "No," I said. "Don't tell me anymore. I don't want to hear it. It's your fault."

Both of them exchanged perplexed glances. "No, El, it ain't our fault," Soda said. "It's the country, they want us – "

"No!" I yelled. "No, you're wrong! They don't!"

"Eleanor, take it easy, please?" Steve reached for my arm but I pushed him away. "You know it ain't our fault, honey. It's the Army. Vietnam – "

I think I might have been crying, but I wasn't sure. It was all such a blur. Keeping my hands over my ears, I turned away from them, blocking them out further by singing nursery rhymes right out loud. I think that I sang something that was a cross between "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," some sort of twisted medley. I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

Then I realized I didn't have to be around them if I didn't want to be, and turned around and told them that I hoped they were happy with themselves, and ran off to my room, making sure to slam and lock the door behind me. I was being immature and childish, and I knew it, but I didn't care. I needed to get my mind off of this.

I padded across the floor to my bed and sank down next to Inka, my beautiful black kitty, named appropriately because she looked like a little ink spot on my floor when I got her. I ran my hand over her soft coat. It was like silk. Seeming a bit skeptical, she opened one eye, but when she saw that it was only me she rolled over onto her back and went back to sleep. I wanted to smile, but I couldn't.

I sensed an onslaught of more tears. I still couldn't seem to understand it. Why? Why them? They were my best friends. What was I going to do without them?

I couldn't come to terms with it. They were being drafted into a war that nobody understood.

It was April, 1967.

xxx

**A/N: **That was a bit longer than I thought it would be. I guess it had to be, though.

Reviews are appreciated!


	7. Seven

**A/N: **I'm surprised. I usually don't write this quick. I must have been inspired.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders, _"The Times they are a-Changin'," written and performed by Bob Dylan, or "Carrie Anne," written by Allan Clarke, Graham Nash, and Tony Hicks, and performed by The Hollies.

---

**Chapter Seven:**

" … _then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone / for the times, they are a-changin' … "_

For two days I didn't speak to either of them.

Of course I knew that it wasn't their fault. They didn't want to go to Vietnam any more than I did. I just couldn't grasp the idea that they, of all people, were being drafted, and I suppose that's what had caused me to act out the way that I did. I was angry, of course, but not at them. It couldn't have been their fault, anyway, could it?

But for some reason I just couldn't bring myself to speak to them.

And for the whole weekend, I didn't. On Saturday I conveniently "forgot" to visit them at the gas station, which in the past had been like a tradition, in a sense. Their attempts at demanding what the hell was wrong with me failed, as I would reply with a curt, "Gee, that must be just the wind," or some such comment. I think that they really started to believe that I was mad at them.

I wasn't, though. Not really. The reason behind my anger towards them, besides the obvious, was a bit shadowy. I think that I was just angry with the whole state of the country, and the fact that we always had to poke our noses in other countries' business. We weren't a Communist country. How come we had to go into a country that was, and inevitably become their enemy?

It just caused me to become very irritated. No, I wasn't mad at Soda and Steve. Rather, I was mad at my country. Unfortunately I seemed to have a big problem with taking that anger and utter annoyance out on people who were merely victims in the situation.

Ponyboy said that I was acting like an idiot, and Darry said that I shouldn't be acting like such a child, that I should be ashamed of it. Was I acting like a child? Or was I just silently voicing my opposition to this whole conflict?

"Ashamed?" I had replied. "I'm ashamed of my country for putting them in that position. It's not our war."

"Oh, and is that why you ain't talkin' to them?"

I couldn't answer that yet, and to dodge the subject, I went outside and took a walk for a while, hoping that I'd be able to clear my head. It worked. The sunshine and the fresh air seemed to do some good for me, and I think that my attitude improved a bit. Mentally I kept on questioning everything, but I didn't feel as angry. And after a while I sat down in the grass, just to reflect. And think. And try to sort what was left of my thoughts.

In a few months from that exact moment, Soda and Steve would be in Vietnam, formerly known as Indochina, that little tiny country that nobody knew about. It was very hard to believe, and also seemed very unfair, not only to them but to the other American boys who were about to do the same thing.

I couldn't picture my brother holding one of those M-16s that they always showed on the news, cradled in the arms of some tired-looking soldier. Steve, maybe – he'd probably get pretty into it. But Soda would hardly dream of volunteering, even, given the chance.

It was so unfair. There was only so much you could learn from Daddy's old Navy stories. That had been a different war, a different area. A different reason, though what reason did any good now? Nobody knew _why. _I wondered, for a moment, if the President even knew. He'd said himself that he wouldn't send anymore American boys over there, but it was happening, anyway. Why?

That was a universal question, and had gone unanswered countless times in the past. But my question? Why were we their enemy? We had gone over there with the knowledge that if we didn't stop Communism from existing there, then it could mean ruin for the rest of the world. We'd gone over there to help.

And _this _is what came of trying to help. A war. A pointless, stupid war. It seemed closer than ever, now. Closer to me, to my family. Of course I'd always been against it. But it was hard to give it much thought when you didn't know anybody over there, when you only saw the celluloid version of it on the television. Now that Soda and Steve were going to be over there, though, it was as if it were going on right in my backyard.

God, every time I thought of it, my stomach sank and my heart seemed to stop. They would be over there, on the front lines of a hellish war zone. These two whom I had grown up with, who were about as fit for a war as I was. Oh, sure – they could handle rumbles and little fights here and there, but compared to what Vietnam was said to be like, that was nothing but a giant cake walk.

No. They weren't cut out to be soldiers. Their lives weren't supposed to include a tour of duty. They were supposed to be wearing t-shirts and jeans, not fatigues and combat boots. They were barely eighteen. What the _hell _was wrong with this country?

On Monday evening, it was very humid outside, and it rained. At eight I watched _I Dream of Jeannie_ for a while, and then decided that enough was enough. It wasn't their fault – I knew that – but why couldn't I just have admitted that to myself at the start?

Soda was in the kitchen when I came in to get some ice cream. He was working on finishing the last of the dishes while simultaneously trying to find a radio station where the static was minimal. AM could go mighty far, but it sure didn't have very good reception.

"Need some help?" I asked.

He turned around, giving me a once-over. "You're actually _talking _to me? Boy, wait'll I tell Steve."

"Cut the crap," I said. "I'm sorry. I was just … I was upset, that's all. I still am."

"I am, too," he said quietly, after a long pause.

"I figured as much. You sure you don't need a hand with those dishes?"

"No. I'm almost finished. I sure could use a hand findin' a good song on the radio, though."

"Let me try," I said, and he tossed me the transistor. Just slightly, I moved the dial until it came to a station where, surprisingly, there was hardly any static. I think the song was "Carrie Anne." I was a folk and psychedelic girl, but I liked this song all right.

"How'd you do that?" Soda wondered.

I smiled. "I have my ways."

He nodded and went back to scrubbing a few plates. The hesitation between us seemed to last for a long time. Neither of us knew who should speak next, or what to say. The music seemed to be the only icebreaker.

_You were always something special to me  
Quite independent, never caring  
You lost your charm as you were aging  
Where is your magic disappearing?_

"Do you even _want _to go?" I demanded after a moment or two. "To Vietnam?"

He turned around quickly, staring at me as if I'd just escaped from the looney bin. "Are you kidding?" he demanded. "I'd rather kill myself before letting Vietnam do the dirty work for me."

That must have been a bit of gory humor. "That's a nice thing to say. Does Steve want to go?"

"I don't know. Ask him." He paused. "As a matter of fact, I _could _use a hand with these."

I rolled my eyes. It was only a matter of time.

I think he knew, though. He just didn't want to talk about it anymore.

But who could blame him for that?

xxx

**A/N: **Thanks for all the reviews, guys. : )

Also …

**Body Count - **or BC, the reported count of casualties  
**Basic Training- **the first phase of military training received by a trainee upon entrance in the military service  
**M-16 – **standard gas-operated rifle assigned to every ground combat soldier or infantryman in Vietnam


	8. Eight

**A/N: **Sorry about that elongated delay. Obviously, I have returned. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "For What it's Worth," written by Stephen Stills and performed by Buffalo Springfield.

---

**Chapter Eight: **

" … _there's battle lines bein' drawn / and nobody's right if everybody's wrong … "_

The war was escalating by the day.

That's all there was to it. That's all they talked about on the news. They said that our soldiers were succumbing more to mines and things like that than they were to enemy fire. That was not the most pleasant thought in the world – I don't think that it helped Soda and Steve's situation much, either – but at least the people on the news were avoiding the subject of 'death' as much as they could, or at least trying to. Maybe.

They didn't really show pictures of it, either. The authorities probably wouldn't permit that; it would frighten too many people. The most that they showed were American GIs walking through tall grass, or across a rice paddy, or body bags being loaded onto helicopters, but even _that _was disturbing.

At the end of the segment Walter Cronkite would give the body count. I don't know why people would want to hear about that. Couldn't they wait until after the war was over to tell us how many of our boys were dying, or had died? Why did we have to know every single night?

But as the newscasters spoke, they'd mostly show you images of the soldiers, usually looking very weary, with dirty, unshaven faces and wrinkled uniforms, some dusty and caked with mud, a few not wearing shirts at all, merely clad in fatigues and combat boots. Some of their faces were so darkened with dirt and ash that you could only make out the whites of their eyes. It was almost kind of ghostly.

I noticed a lot of them were in the Army, according to the small tag on their shirts that flaunted their branch, and this was a bit comforting – knowing that this was the branch that Soda and Steve had been drafted into – because the majority of them looked pretty happy, despite the fact that you could clearly see in their eyes how exhausted they were.

You could also see that some soldiers had written or drawn things on their helmets. I saw one that said _FTA _in big black letters only I didn't know what it stood for. Nobody else that I asked did, either. There was another who'd drawn a target right in the middle of his. I figured it was probably some sort of sick joke. Some had drawn peace symbols or marijuana leaves, and others had written various things that I couldn't read clearly over the black-and-white of our television.

But what about the images that the newscasters _didn't _show you? What about the dead and the wounded, the ones who would only be remembered by their comrades-in-arms? Would they be recognized someday, or would they just become another nameless soldier in the shadowy mist of war?

They were heroes, to me.

Steve and Soda may have been going involuntarily, but they would be heroes, too.

"El, if you're gonna sit there all day and stare at the TV, then we'll just go without you."

Go without me? I turned around quickly. Steve was halfway out the door, for some reason. I didn't know where we were going. Soda was nice enough to wait.

"What do you mean, 'go without me'?"

"Aren't you going with us?"

I narrowed my eyes. "We had plans?"

"Yeah. To make up for last Friday, since ... well, _you _know."

I did. Because of the draft notices we ended up not going to the movies that day. So I nodded and switched off the television. The whole deal with the war was becoming much too depressing, anyway. I didn't have to think about it yet, and I was glad, because I didn't want to.

"I know," I said. "Where are we going?"

He shrugged. "Movies. Where else?"

"That's it? I thought it'd be more exciting."

"Do you _want _to go someplace else?"

"It might be nice," I said, searching around for my shoes. It was warm out; I didn't think that I'd need more than sandals. Quickly, I pulled some of my hair back in a clip that was lying on the table. I liked having long hair, but it could be a major hassle sometimes.

"Then we'll grab a bite to eat on the way."

"Might as well," I said. "It's not dark yet. Oh, wait. You did say we were going to the movies, right?"

"It's Friday, isn't it?"

I smiled. "Where's Steve?"

"He just went back outside. You saw him."

"I did. Well, you can meet me in the car, then. I just gotta go and grab some money real quick. I don't wanna make you guys pay for me all the time."

He'd been almost halfway out the door, but stopped and turned around when I'd said that. "Because we're in the Army now?"

I rolled my eyes. "You're _not _in the Army yet, and no, that's not why. I just want to do something for myself for a change. You guys don't always have to do stuff for me."

"But we like to," he said.

"I know. And that's very nice. But you don't have to."

He shrugged. I expected more of an argument. "Okay, well, see you outside. Don't take too long."

"I won't. Don't leave without me."

"Be back before midnight!" Darry called from the kitchen. In a moment he appeared in the doorway. "You okay for money, Eleanor?"

"Yeah, I got it. As soon as I find it."

"Bathroom counter. You left it there yesterday."

I frowned, wondering why in the hell I'd left my money on the bathroom counter of all places, but went and got it anyway. When I came back into the room Darry shoved me playfully and told me to have a good time.

"I'll have whatever kinda time I damn well please," I joked. He just shook his head and reminded me, once more, to be back before midnight. It was such a common command that I could have written it out verbatim, and in advance.

He didn't really show it, but Darry was pretty shaken up about the whole draft thing, too. It was just one of those things – you don't think it'll ever happen to you until it actually does. I think that that's how he felt about it, and now he didn't really know what to make of it.

And it wasn't difficult to tell that he was very bent on figuring out what he would do about our financial situation after Soda left. It sounded as though things might get a little more than stressful, in more ways than one. The income wouldn't be all that great and, well ... just the idea of having a family member overseas in a war zone was enough to disturb anyone. Even Darry.

I bet even Dally would be a bit freaked out, if he were here, although ... now that I think about it, he probably would have been drafted, too. Though he was the kind of guy I could almost picture over there, it was still scary to think about. People were absolutely right when they said that wars ripped families apart.

When I got to Steve's car outside, Soda was in the back seat. I frowned at him. "Excuse me," I said, "but I believe that's my seat."

He shook his head. "Not today. I'm lettin' you ride shotgun."

"Because you're sick of my complaining?"

"Because this might be one of the last times the three of us are in this car together," he said quietly. We couldn't admit it to each other or to ourselves, but the grim reality of it all was that that was the truth. If something happened to either of them over there ... if they ... I could hardly think about it.

Instead I smiled sadly and climbed into the front passenger seat next to Steve, who almost always drove, no matter what. He even let me pick the radio station. I couldn't figure out why they were being so nice to _me, _considering _they _were the ones going off to war. Shouldn't it have been the other way around? Maybe they were trying to get my mind off of it, but – I doubted it.

Because if they _really _wanted to do that, then at that moment we would have been driving to San Francisco, or someplace equally exciting.

"You know," I said, "when people want to escape the draft, they go to Canada."

"No, Eleanor," Steve said, sounding quite serious. "We are _not _driving to Canada."

"I'm just saying. Besides, it was only a suggestion."

"And not a bad one, either," Soda added. "Hell, I'd do it."

I smiled. "Two against one. I think you lose, Steve."

"I'm the driver. We're not going to Canada. End of story."

"Can we go to the movies instead?" I wondered, jokingly.

He glanced over at me and I thought I saw him smirk. Maybe not. You couldn't ever be too sure with him. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I think we can."

Except when we got there, it looked as if we had wasted our time – and maybe a good chunk of our lives, too. There weren't any decent movies playing. It sounded like a complaint, but it was true. There weren't. We stayed anyway, though, and I said to look on the bright side: it was better than nothing, but received a faceful of popcorn for my trouble.

I was glad that I'd left one of my _Life _magazines in the car, though, because after a while I became so bored that I really had no other choice but to read them. We should have just gone somewhere else instead, I thought, but it was too late now.

When we got back after the movie, we sat in the driveway for a long time, not speaking. The guy on the radio had mentioned Vietnam and that did it. We'd been trying to avoid it, but after that we knew that we couldn't anymore. So we sat there, and we thought about it. There didn't seem to be much to actually say.

"I don't get it," I said at last. "President Johnson said, 'I will not send American boys to do a job that Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.' So why does he keep drafting everybody?"

"Wish I could answer that one, El," Steve said, his voice somber. "I don't know."

"I don't get it, either," Soda agreed. "Seems kinda stupid."

"It _seems _stupid? What do you mean, _seems? _It _is _stupid." I sat back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest, frustrated. Outside, the dark seemed to come through the window and penetrate my eyes. I think I might have been crying just a little bit. "What a joke."

I'd read that the whole conflict with Vietnam had started with the French back in 1954, when they were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, over ten years ago, and three years after I was born. It was odd to think that it had been going on that long, and I wondered how much longer it would last, because it didn't seem to be slowing down any. That's what made me angry. Nobody was doing anything to stop it.

"Kennedy never would have let this happen," I added. "He never would have."

"El, there's lots of other things going on here," Soda said. "It's not all the war."

He must have meant civil rights, and other controversial things like that. "I know that. But people act like ... like they know our guys are dying over there and it doesn't have to matter. Must be nice not to ever worry about it."

Steve shook his head. "That ain't true," he said. "It's on the news every goddamn day. People worry. Hell, _I _worry, and I know that sounds strange comin' from me, but – "

"It's different," I told him. "You worry because you're going to be over there. The ones who don't worry are the ones who aren't over there, or the ones who don't know anybody over there." I faltered. "Besides, I thought you were excited about going."

"Think about it, Eleanor," Soda said. "Would _you _be excited about going halfway around the world to blow somebody's head off?"

"Well, no, but – "

"See? Exactly. He's not excited."

I narrowed my eyes. "That doesn't even sound like you, though, Steve. You're not a very compassionate person. No offense."

"I know I'm not. I mean, except for you two. But as much as I like rumbles and stuff, I don't think I'd wanna actually kill someone, or see someone get killed. Because doesn't that happen over there? Guys see their buddies get killed right in front of 'em?" He stopped short, as if he couldn't believe what he'd just said. "I heard it happens all the time."

"It does," I said sadly. "I overheard a guy talking about it at the supermarket the other day in the checkout aisle. He was a veteran, in uniform and everything. I think maybe he'd just gotten back recently."

"Army?"

"No. He was a Marine. And really young, too. Do you know what else?"

"What?" they both said in unison, and acted like they should be preparing themselves for what I was about to say.

"He was missing an arm," I said. "It was just ... gone, right up to the shoulder. I couldn't help staring, but you don't see that every day, you know?"

They nodded. Soda looked scared, and upset, like he thought the same thing would happen to him. I continued.

"I was right behind him, so before I left, I told him I was sorry. I just said, 'Sir, I just wanted to say I'm sorry about your arm and I think you're very brave.'"

"What did he say?"

I sighed. "He thanked me. Then he said he lost it trying to save his friend, but his friend ended up dying anyway. He said that he thought he'd lost his arm for nothing, but I said, no, he was very brave and should have received a medal. Then he laughed and said that he did get one, a Purple Heart. It was funny, but you could tell how upset he was."

Now they both stared at me, eyes wide.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to scare you, I just – "

"No, it's okay," said Soda. "That's what it's gonna be like out there. We're gonna have to get used to it sooner or later. Right, Steve?"

"Right, buddy. Now are you two gonna get out of my car so I can leave, or what?"

"Why leave? You should just stay at our house tonight," I suggested. "It'll be like a sleepover!"

And then right after I said that, Soda said, "El, I hope you're joking," just at the same moment as Steve said, "Don't ever say that again."

I laughed. "I _was _joking, and I won't. But remember last summer when the air conditioner broke and the house felt like an oven and I had the brilliant idea to sleep on the porch in the backyard? I was thinking we should do that again. It would be kinda fun."

"But the air conditioner's fine," Soda said.

"Well, what difference does that make?"

He just shrugged and so it was decided. I wasn't that tired and I was pretty sure neither of us would get much sleep anyway.

Besides, it really was one of the last times we'd have to be regular kids before they went off to boot camp and got turned into real live rifle-carrying, Vietnamese-killing combat soldiers. I wasn't letting them leave me that easily.

xxx

**A/N: **Reviews are appreciated! Chapter Nine coming soon. :)


	9. Nine

**A/N: **Here's Chapter Nine. Happy reading. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders_ or "Incense and Peppermints," written by John Carter and Tim Gilbert, and performed by Strawberry Alarm Clock.

---

**Chapter Nine: **

" … _beatniks and politics, nothing is new / a yardstick for lunatics, one point of view … "_

"Eleven thirty," Darry said when we came inside. "Not too shabby. Another half hour in the car and you three would have been in big trouble. Next time try for eleven-fifteen, will ya?"

"Next time," I said quietly, knowing that there might not be one of those. "Right."

"Got the couch tonight, Steve?"

"Nah, Eleanor had an idea. We're sleeping out on the porch tonight. All three of us."

"Well, good luck with that," Darry said. "I heard it's supposed to rain tonight. Tomorrow, too, maybe."

I shook my head. "Feels too nice out to rain. I hope it doesn't."

He turned the television to the late news and sat down to watch it. "You never know, Eleanor."

I smiled, not in the frame of mind to argue, and was about to go off to my room to get a few things when the man's voice on the news stopped me. I stood where I was and watched as the camera panned across images of more body bags being loaded onto helicopters, the occasional actual dead body, and children screaming in the streets of what I guessed was Saigon. Saigon was the capital of South Vietnam. I knew because I had a map of the whole country. I wanted to use it when Soda and Steve wrote to me – _if _they wrote to me – so I could locate exactly where they were.

When the French still had control over it, Saigon was supposed to be a beautiful city. But the images they showed on the news didn't look so beautiful.

"Is this what they do?" I wondered aloud. "Show the worst images on the late news when they assume kids aren't watching?"

"It's the truth, Eleanor," Darry said. "The papers and the regular news don't give you the truth, just what we want to hear: that somehow we're winning."

"And are we?"

The sudden silence answered that question. No, we were not winning this awful war, and by the way things were going, it didn't look like we had much of a chance.

"But we have a million troops over there, it seems, and air support, and other things that they don't," I pointed out. "How is it that they're winning and we're not?"

"They have strong armies," Darry explained, "and they're fighting on their own soil. We don't know the terrain."

"And think about how bad the war would be if they _did _have airplanes," Soda said. He was right. I shuddered to think about it. It would be a lot worse.

"I just wish we could get the hell out of there, and soon," I said. And it was true. We had absolutely no reason for being over there – except for Communism, apparently – and young men were dying for nothing. It was too horrible. I'd had enough of the war for one day, and decided to change the subject. "Where's Ponyboy?"

"He went to bed," Darry told me, "about forty-five minutes ago. So if you're going in your guys' room, be quiet, all right?"

I nodded, leaving the room quick so I didn't have to hear the man on the news anymore.

I'd been sharing a room with Soda and Pony since we were little kids. It didn't bother me. I liked the company, incase there was a thunderstorm, or nowadays, if I had a question about something and it was important enough so that I had to wake them up in the middle of the night to ask it. Usually there were no answers – there didn't seem to be any, these days, from anybody – but I still felt the importance and I think they did, too, even though they didn't admit it.

The room was dark when I went in, but I had to turn at least one light on so that I could see my way around. I'd tried before to maneuver in the dark, and it just didn't work. I turned on the desk lamp in the corner and my side of the room was bathed in light. Inka slept peacefully at the end of my bed, unaware of my presence. I reached for some of the things I usually brought out to the porch with me when we hung around out there, and stopped when I noticed the pictures on my wall next to the bed. They'd always been there, but I couldn't remember ever stopping to really look. They were always just _there. _

The first, up towards the window, was yet another of me and Soda and Steve. It was black-and-white, unlike some of the others, but it had only been taken last year, at the county fair. We were standing in front of the Ferris wheel, probably had just gotten off of it. I looked somewhat annoyed, and I knew why. Right before we got on – and this happened every single time – I specifically warned the two of them not to rock the carriage – or whatever the thing is called – and they did it anyway, nearly giving me a coronary. There was even a sign on there that clearly said not to, but they still did it, just to see my reaction. Still, it was a good picture. Another one that captured our relationship.

Slightly below that was a color photograph of President Kennedy, whom, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., I admired more than any other political figure, even though he'd been assassinated almost four years before. I always strongly believed that had that not happened, our involvement in Vietnam right now would be either very minimal, or nonexistent. I admired his beliefs, his views, and his plans for America's future. I'd watch him on television all the time when he gave speeches, or just talked, because I found the things he had to say insightful and very important.

And next to that was a picture of my father in the Navy. He was quite young, and quite handsome. I could see a part of all four of us in him. My dad had shown us lots of pictures of him and his buddies when he was in the Navy. There was even one of him standing in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I still had the statue of it: it sat on the windowsill right above his photograph.

But they were all gone. My parents, President Kennedy, America's innocence ... it was all gone, replaced with something so sinister and so evil that it hardly seemed real. And the scary thing about it was that it was real, all of it. And when someone asked why, there was no answer. There never had been. Maybe there never would be.

Outside, the air was humid. The moon was out and the stars shone brightly against the dark backdrop of the sky. The trees no longer even seemed like trees, just dark silhouettes that stood sentry on the lawn, and long wisps of clouds spread out evenly high above. It was a perfect spring night. Perfect and lovely.

The three of us sat in silence for a long time, all wondering about different things, yet connected by our fears and our worries over what the coming months would bring. Another question formed in my mind, and I knew there wasn't going to be a real answer, but I wanted to ask anyway.

"Do you guys ever wonder where we'll be in five years, or ten? I mean, if the war will be over, or integration ..."

"Ten years? The war would have to be over by then," Soda said seriously.

"Maybe," I said, "but what about five? Or even one?"

Steve shook his head and lit a cigarette. "I don't think it'll be over in one. Look how bad it is now, or how bad it's getting. Besides," he went on, _"we'll _still be over there in one year, for a couple more months."

"Isn't there some way you guys can get out of going? I don't think I'll be able to stand you not being here."

"You mean, besides being draft dodgers?"

I nodded. If I were them, I would have gladly gone to Canada. I don't know why Steve didn't want to. Maybe he was just really bent on serving the country, though he hadn't said as much, and I really doubted it. "Yes," I said.

"Maybe. Come on, Steve, let's go jump off the roof and break our necks. They won't take us then."

"You guys are nuts," I said.

"You asked."

Yes, I had, but I knew what he was saying: there wasn't another way. As far as the United States Army was concerned, they would be trained in infantry, and shipped off to Vietnam, no questions asked. Period, end of story, no excuses. Unless we could just go to Canada, but that prospect didn't look too promising. And deep down, I still wanted to finish school, too. When the time came I was planning on applying to UC Berkeley, and going to Canada with them might rob me of that. But thinking only about that made me sound selfish, and anyway, it was the least of my worries right now.

"Quite honestly," I said at last, "I think this country's going to hell. Going nowhere fast."

"Me too," Soda said, and Steve nodded.

"Me three."

"But I mean, we have no reason to be over there. Why in the hell can't we let them take care of their own damn Communist problems? We're not even a Communist country, we're a democracy, so what the hell are we doing over there? What is it going to prove in the end? I'll tell you what: nothing. Nothing at all. It's completely pointless."

"El, come on. Do we really need to talk about the war? You know we'll be getting enough of that."

"No, she's got a point," Steve offered in my defense. "Eleanor, I think you are a very smart girl. I wish I could be more like you."

I smiled. "You want to be a smart girl?"

He laughed. "No, you know what I mean."

"Yeah. I don't know. I think I'm too opinionated. I ask too many questions."

"No," Soda said, "you just ask them at the wrong times."

"Really? Is right now the wrong time?"

"No. Try three o'clock in the morning." He laughed at my expense and I punched him in the arm playfully.

"I can't help it," I defended myself. "I guess I'm just curious. Or maybe I think I understand but I really don't. And nobody will tell you anything at school. You ask why and they change the subject. The teachers, I mean. And they're the type of people that are supposed to know everything, you know? But when it all comes down to it, they don't know shit, at least concerning the stuff that we have questions about. Or maybe they do, they just don't want to tell us."

"I think that's pretty dumb," said Steve. "I mean, that's another thing that sounds weird coming from me, but you're right. And you're pretty interested in that sorta stuff, aren't ya?" I nodded. "Probably other people are, too. They should tell you stuff."

"And then some," I added, and shook my head in disbelief. It was hard to understand the reasons why everyone wanted to know why, but nobody wanted to talk about it, or share their real opinion, or even try and begin to answer the universal question. Were they afraid? Was it so wrong? It didn't make any sense. But then again, nothing seemed to make sense anymore.

Those kinds of things always got me to thinking about how different I was from everyone, my family to an extent, and the loud, tough girls on our side of town. I never was anything like them. At age twelve I used to watch _The Fugitive _with my parents. I read the newspaper, and I watched the news, because unlike all of them, I wanted to know, and I cared. I dreamed and laughed and played in the sunshine and wished on stars, things people like them would never do, things people like Dally used to tease me about. But that was always just me. And sometimes I even scared myself, with all of my questions, and my lack of understanding even though I could sometimes swear I did. I was sure people got annoyed with me at times, or maybe they were just like everyone else and wanted to pretend it all didn't exist.

"I'm tired," I said at last. Truthfully, I was tired of everything in general, but I didn't say that. I was normal tired too.

"Really? You're not staying up with us anymore?"

"No, I don't think so. I need my beauty sleep."

"Okay, Cleopatra."

"I'm kidding," I said. "I really am tired, though." And after a moment, "Oh, I just had the most horrible thought."

"What?" they said in unison.

"You guys are gonna be gone. Who am I gonna go to the fair with this summer?"

"You'll find someone," Steve said nonchalantly. I glared at him.

"We'll be there in spirit," Soda offered.

"Bullshit, you'll be twelve thousand miles away, physically _and _spiritually."

"We need to talk about something else now, I think," Soda said. "It's only the beginning of May, anyway."

"_Only?" _

"El, stop being such a girl," Steve said. He seemed to enjoy pointing out the fact that, yes, I was indeed a female. Not that it wasn't obvious, or anything. "And stop panicking, too, will ya? You're not even the one that's gonna be over there."

"No, but I'll be the one worrying."

"Yeah, right along with a million other people."

"What, like you're not scared."

"Maybe I'm not," he said. "Maybe I wanna go over there, earn some medals, shoot some Congs. You dig?"

"No, I don't _dig, _and that's a horrible thing to say. I don't know why you would even _want _to kill people you don't even know. I mean, think about it. They have families too."

"Yeah, and so do we. But do you think they think about that shit when they're planting land mines for some unsuspecting GI to step on or shooting your face off with a rifle? No, Eleanor, they don't, and neither do we. I'm pretty sure that when you're right in the middle of a battle, that doesn't matter, and no one thinks about it. It's not important."

"It's important to me," I snapped. "It's not like we have to be over there, or anything. I'm sure the Vietnamese people could do just fine without us, but no."

"You don't even understand, do you?"

"No, I don't, Steve. I don't understand a goddamn thing about this war. And you know something? Neither do you, because you haven't even been over there yet. And that Marine I talked to at the supermarket the other day? He was over there, got his arm blown off and everything, and guess what? He still doesn't understand. He told me that. So I think you should just stop trying, because if you want to know the truth, probably nobody ever will. And if you want to know what I think – "

"I don't," he snapped.

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away. "Fine."

"Fine."

"Great," Soda muttered.

Steve looked from me to him. "What's great?"

"Now you two are gonna be mad at each other the rest of the night. That's what's great."

"Why would I be mad?" I said. "If he doesn't want to know what I think, it's fine. So why would I be mad?"

"I've heard enough of what _you_ think ever since we got those damn draft notices," Steve said, his voice dripping venom.

"Well now I am mad, because that was a mean thing to say."

"Maybe you deserved it, Miss Know-It-All."

I wrinkled my nose in distaste. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"You think you're a know-it-all."

"I don't."

"You do, too," he argued.

"I do not! Take that back."

"No. I don't have to listen to you."

"Well, you think _I'm _a know-it-all? You should have heard yourself five minutes ago, saying it didn't matter that the other people had families. I can't imagine where you would get an idea like that. You don't read the paper, do you? And as far as I know, you don't know anyone who has been over there, and even if you did, they probably wouldn't tell you anyway because maybe they don't want to talk about their experience over there, so why in the hell would you even know about anything like that?"

"See? You're doing it again!"

"Doing what again?"

"Acting like you know everything," he said. "You don't know, Eleanor. You don't know a damn thing."

"Neither do you!"

"So?"

"Is that why you didn't want to go to Canada? Because you _want _to be over there?"

"What if it is?"

"You guys, please, stop fighting!" Soda said. "You're drivin' me nuts. Just tell each other you're sorry and forget about it, all right?"

"I don't have to tell him I'm sorry. He started it."

"No, I didn't. You did."

"Oh, did I? Prove it."

"Okay, stop, it doesn't matter who started it. Just stop fighting. Tell her you're sorry. You obviously made her upset."

Steve glared at Soda, and then at me. Then he just looked defeated. "Sorry, Eleanor."

"Good."

"El," Soda corrected me sharply.

"It's okay." But it wasn't. God damn right he had upset me; he made it sound like he had no respect. Then, just to make it legal, "I'm sorry, too."

I guess it was a lucky thing that I didn't stay angry at anyone or anything for too long, because soon enough that 'fight' – if you could even call it that – didn't matter anymore. You just had to understand that that's the kind of thing that happens with three different opinions, and take it with a grain of salt, because there always would be some sort of argument involved. Of course, there were a lot of things we agreed on, but then, there were a lot of things that we didn't agree on, either.

I thought I had felt tired before but now I was beginning to feel very drowsy and exhausted, and completely spent. After a while I just stopped talking, and instead stretched out on the porch and closed my eyes, listening absently as Soda and Steve chattered on and on about cars and girls and movies, and not once did I hear them talk about the war. It occurred to me then that maybe all that was my fault. Maybe they were trying to avoid it until they couldn't anymore, and maybe I was making it worse by constantly bringing the subject up. And then the last thing I remember was Soda shaking me slightly and asking if I was awake, but I didn't answer because I knew that I was too wiped out to try and get up again even if I wanted to, and then after that I drifted off completely.

I woke up again a little later but it felt as if I had only been asleep for about ten minutes. However it was still dark, and the long wisps of clouds from before had thickened into burnt marshmallows, and although there was no thunder, I could see heat lightning beginning to accumulate off in the distance. I allowed myself to sit there in the silence and the stillness and watch it for a while, and then I got up and went inside because I had to go to the bathroom.

I did so, and then noticed the light in the kitchen was on. I found this to be quite strange, as usually the last person to go to bed turned all of the lights off. I figured maybe Darry had left it on incase one of us came inside during the night, but when I went in there I was surprised to find him sitting at the table, reading the paper. I think we both gave each other a scare, though, for we both jumped about two feet in the air and then declared, "God, you startled me," almost simultaneously.

"What are you doing still up?" I wondered. I sat down at the table across from my eldest brother and watched as he carefully folded the newspaper back into its original form.

"Think I could ask you the same thing," he said.

"Well, if you must know, I had to use the bathroom," I told him. "But I'm not the one who has to get up early for work tomorrow morning."

He shrugged. "Guess I just couldn't really sleep that well. I mean, I've been thinking about ... well, you know, the draft notice, and Soda goin' over there. Steve, too."

I nodded, understanding exactly where he was coming from. "It's kept me up some nights, too," I said. "Darry, do you think we _really _belong over there? I mean, as a country. Do you think they're wrong to keep sending troops over?" He didn't answer for a moment, and I went on. "I don't think we do, but sometimes I just don't know."

"I don't, either," he conceded. "I only know what I see on the news or read in the paper, and it ain't like they tell you all that much to begin with. But I do think our guys are getting killed faster than Johnson's sending 'em over."

"I think so, too. It's not fair. It's not fair for any of those boys. When they show some of those soldiers on television or in _Life _magazine ... it breaks my heart, you know? Some of them look so young, just barely out of high school. And those real young ones are always the ones that end up dead or wounded. I hate it."

He only gave a single nod, but I could tell that, despite his hard authority as eldest brother and designated parent, he felt the same way. "Y'know, Dad always used to say how they didn't have this stuff on television in World War II. All they had was the radio. He said this'd be the first televised war in this country's history."

"Televised war," I repeated. "Almost doesn't make it sound as bad, does it?" I faltered for a moment and drew imaginary shapes and figures on the tabletop with my index finger, revealing the surface beneath the thin layer of dust. "A looking-glass war," I said quietly. "That's what I'd call it."

"You better get back to bed now, Eleanor," he said to me. "I know you haven't been getting much sleep lately. That ain't good for you, you know?"

"I know." I stood up. "You should get to bed, too. You'll get overtired."

"Yeah," he said, "I know."

I smiled and told him good-night, and then decided I didn't want to go back outside anymore. I ambled down the hall towards my room and collapsed under the covers. Inka, whom I believe had migrated over to the chair at my desk, came over and jumped up onto the bed, settling herself comfortably on top of my legs.

The cat's low purring and the feeling of her warm body next to mine lulled me into a quick, easy sleep, and I didn't wake up again until noon.

xxx

**A/N: **I guess this chapter was a little longer than normal, but that's okay.

Reviews are appreciated!


	10. Ten

**A/N: **Sorry for the delay. Here's Chapter Ten. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters," written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and performed by Elton John.

---

**Chapter Ten:**

" … _for unless they see the sky, but they can't and that is why / they know not if it's dark outside or light … "_

I must admit I was a bit surprised at the lack of noise when I awoke, even though I'm sure that much of what was on my mind at the present was a bit obstructed, and was probably causing some of the forgetfulness that I was often plagued with upon waking up in the morning. But noise and pandemonium throughout the house was something that had just become very commonplace over the years, even when my parents were alive, and I knew today was Saturday, so why did things seem so tranquil?

My lower half felt numb from the weight of the cat whom I assumed had slept there all night long, or for however many hours I was asleep, but now that she had gotten up and moved, my knees and my upper legs felt like long strips of elastic there under the warm covers. The sun was high in the sky but came through my window anyway, nearly blinding me, as if reaching in through the glass and telling me it was time to get up. I still couldn't fathom the silence, though. It almost motivated me to check and make sure all time hadn't stopped while I was sleeping, because it sure felt like it had.

I sighed and swung my legs over the side of the bed, feeling groggy and disoriented. It really would have been nice just to fall back into sleep but now that I was up, there was no way that would happen. My brothers would make sure of that. Remembering that, I had the worst time trying to figure out why one of them hadn't tried to wake me up already. With them around it was very difficult to sleep much past ten or eleven.

Behind me, Inka sat on the windowsill with her back facing me, watching the birds fly back and forth between the trees or sitting atop the telephone wires. I hadn't noticed her there before. Usually she makes these odd chirping noises whenever she watches birds or bunnies or squirrels, but if she had been doing that at all, I hadn't heard it.

Maybe I really did have too much on my mind, because I seemed to be as tuned out to the world around me as the flower children in San Francisco, the ones who took LSD for kicks. I rubbed my eyes and then quickly put on some clothes and went out into the living room to try and make sense of this mystery. It was odd, though, to find that everything was as it should be on a Saturday morning – it was just that the noise level was considerably lower.

"Why is it so quiet?" I demanded, my own voice slightly lower than normal as knowing them I figured it to be some sort of let's-see-Eleanor's-reaction joke. This was something else I had learned to expect on a daily basis, as well. Let's-see-how-long-we-can-pull-this-off-before-she-explodes seemed to be a favorite of theirs. And I do mean all of them when I say that. There must be something extremely gratifying in annoying me to no end, but what it is, I can't even begin to understand.

I didn't know, though, that this time they had an actual reason for lowering the volume, until Soda explained it to me. "Darry said you were real tired," he told me, "and he told us not to be too loud, at least till you woke up. And now you are and things are goin' back to normal, looks like."

They were. Two-Bit had turned the television back up—I don't know what was on, but it sounded like a music show—and the radio was playing pretty loud too. I never did understand why both had to be on at the same time. It was a waste of electricity, in my opinion.

"Anyway," he went on, "me and Steve are gonna go get a burger or something in a little bit. You wanna come?"

He went into the bathroom to fix his hair and I followed, deciding to do my own as well. "Right now? But it's still morning. Isn't it?"

"El, it's noon. Where've you been?"

"Asleep," I reminded him. "Can I borrow that comb when you're done with it?"

He looked down at it, and then over at me. "It's got hair grease all over it."

"Well, then where's my brush?"

"On your desk, where it always is." He faltered as I made a face and moved to go back to my bedroom to retrieve my hairbrush. "El, I think there's somethin' up with you today. You know that?"

"I'm fine," I assured him, but it was pretty apparent that I wasn't. None of us really were. We hadn't been for a while now. I hadn't felt like myself since I'd woken up, and I didn't think I'd ever truly feel like myself for a while, not considering the things that had happened, and the things that had the prospect of happening, things that none of us wanted to mention.

I came back with my hairbrush and ran it through my loose banana curls, brushing it straight and then watching it bounce back into its original shape, combing out the knots and the tangles, and then when I was finished the blackish-colored waves fell in loose rivulets just past my shoulders. I think, of everyone in my family, I had the darkest hair, and I couldn't understand why. It must have been some type of genetics thing. Some relative way back when probably had real dark hair like I do.

Soda was still messing around with his hair and I reached down into the drawer next to me, where I kept most of my headbands and hair ribbons, and found a yellow ribbon to match my shirt. I looked back up into the mirror to fix it and then Steve came in, obviously having just arrived here, and he stood behind the two of us for a while, just watching. Then he pointed out that I had left sometime the night before and then promptly wanted to know why.

"I had to go to the bathroom, Steve," I explained. "I'm sorry that's such a problem for you."

"Well, yeah, see, 'cause you never came back after that. And that whole thing was _your _idea, anyway."

"I know," I said simply. "And since it was my idea then that gives me the right to go back on it. So it doesn't matter if I came back or not. Maybe I was tired. You know?"

He mumbled something to himself, and Soda looked annoyed. "If you guys were gonna start fighting again – "

"We're not fighting!" Steve and I exclaimed in unison, and I don't know what it was about all of that, but immediately afterwards I dissolved into fits of giggles and they followed suit soon after. It was good this way, because eventually one of us would realize how stupid and ridiculous some argument was, and start laughing, and soon we'd all be laughing, and the tension would suddenly be lifted like magic. I liked it better that way because then there was no way we could possibly remain upset with one another for much longer than five minutes, sometimes not even that long.

"So you plannin' on goin' with us or not?" Soda wondered.

I rolled my eyes good-naturedly. "Do you even have to ask?"

He grinned and it was contagious. I found myself smiling right back. "If ya say it like that, I guess I don't."

"Okay. Cool." I decided then that I really had to go to the bathroom again and pushed them both out of the room. Soda flashed me a funny look and Steve said, "Eleanor, what the hell?"

"I just realized ... I have to pee," I said by way of apologizing.

Soda rolled his eyes and laughed at me and walked away, and Steve was about to do the same before he went on with, "You don't have to announce it."

"But you did ask, you know," I said to him, and forced a ridiculous girlish giggle, and then closed the door and locked it, because knowing them ...

No. I won't even go into that.

xxx

We always usually just go to the Dingo for these kinds of outings, and right before we left Steve dropped his car keys into my hand and told me to drive there. Following that I stopped dead where I was walking and just stared at him. He knew I'd hardly had any practice with driving, and we both knew that as a result of that I'd probably start off as a terrible driver. And to be completely honest, that wasn't something I really wanted to do right then. I didn't trust myself. "Steve, do you have a death wish, or something?" I demanded, waiting for him to come to his senses and not let me drive.

"No," he said. "I just wanna see if you're any good behind the wheel. And I figure I better let you try it out before I get my face shot off in Vietnam."

My stomach turned uneasily. "Oh, please don't say that."

He looked as if he were about to retort with some snide remark but didn't get much of a chance because Soda came outside then and interrupted with, "Why are you letting her drive? Are you tryin' to get us all killed?"

Steve just shrugged nonchalantly and climbed into the front passenger's seat. "She's gotta learn sometime."

"Maybe from a professional," I muttered to myself. I got into the car as well and sat there for a long moment, waiting for what I was supposed to do next.

"Car's not gonna go anywhere if you don't start it, El," Steve said impatiently. "Put the key in the ignition."

I laughed nervously. "That would help, wouldn't it?"

"Should I do it for you?"

"No!" I said, just a little too quickly. "I mean, no. I'll never learn if I don't do it myself. Isn't that right, Soda?"

"What, now?" he wondered from the back seat. I rolled my eyes.

"Nevermind. Now what do I do?"

He flashed me an _are-you-kidding-me? _expression and said, "You turn the key to the right. No, you're other right. That's left. El, do you even know left from right?"

"Of course I do. I'm not stupid."

"Coulda fooled me," Soda muttered, and I turned around to face him and shot him a dirty look.

"That was a mean thing to say," I said to him. "I'm _not _stupid and you know it."

"And what's the matter with you, anyway?" Steve asked him. "All of a sudden you're ... I don't know. Not _you." _

"I just didn't think I was gonna die today," he told us, but I could tell that it was meant to be a sardonic remark more than a serious one.

"Neither did I," I agreed. "But I guess Steve has other plans."

He reached forward to shake my hand. "It was nice having you as my sister, Eleanor. Maybe, if nothin' bad happens and we actually get there in one piece, that won't have to mean anything."

"I hope not. But just in case, it was nice having you as my brother, too."

"Cut the crap, guys," Steve said, but I could tell he was stifling laughter as a result of our grim mockery. I just laughed and waited for him to tell me what to do next. "Now," he went on, "turn the key so that it's facing me." I did so, but became impatient and upset when it seemed to become stuck.

"It won't go that far," I said.

"Well, the car's started, so don't worry about it."

I took my hand off of the key and sat there for a moment, feeling the engine rattle beneath my feet. "It is, isn't it? That's a major accomplishment for me, you know, since I've never driven a car before."

"Yeah, well, congratulations. Now, this is a stick shift. I'm going to show you how to get it into third gear." And he did, only it took me about five minutes before I actually got it, because there was a whole sequence that you had to go through, but eventually I did get it, and pulled out of the driveway while attempting not to destroy the mailbox, and then I drove away – successfully.

"This isn't so bad," I said. The worst part about it so far was trying to coordinate one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift. And I seemed to be swerving a lot, which didn't help. "I could get used to this."

"Well, don't, because the way you're drivin' right now isn't gonna get you into anything except a big mess. And don't pop the clutch."

"What happens if I do?"

"The car'll jerk forward," Soda told me.

"That doesn't sound like such a big catastrophe to me. What's so bad about it?"

"Nothing," Steve said, "if you like flying out the windshield."

I smiled and gave another nervous laugh. "I, um ... I just won't pop the clutch then."

By the time we got to the Dingo, Soda and Steve were both very flustered, and were not very impressed at all with my driving capabilities – or lack thereof.

"I think I did pretty good," I said brightly. "I mean, for my first time."

"_I _think my heart just stopped," Soda said.

"El," Steve began, "I really don't wanna be the one to tell you this, but ... you are one of the worst drivers I've ever been in the car with. I mean ... here, if I had a dollar for every time you almost ran off the road, I'd be filthy stinkin' rich. You know that?"

"I do now," I said. "Was I really that bad?"

"Terrible."

"You almost ran over a little old lady."

"Now that one was not my fault," I said in my defense. "She saw me coming, but she walked right out into the crosswalk anyway."

"Sure, but you did have a stop sign there."

"All right, fine," I whined submissively. "You guys win. I'm a terrible driver. Here's your car keys, and I'm probably never going to drive your car again."

Steve shook his head and got out of the car. "Probably not."

Soda and I got out too and he waited for us before he went inside the diner. "I hope you know I was saying that from my standing," I told him. "As in, I don't _want _to ever drive your car again."

He just laughed at me and shook his head and walked ahead of us so that he could go in and find us a table. Soda draped his arm across my shoulders and grinned, looking like a little kid. "Y'know, El," he said, "you're real good at makin' people feel good about themselves."

"Not like he's any better," I said. "God, I mean ... can he _be_ any more critical? That was only my first time driving. He can't just expect that I'll turn into, like ... I don't know. A professional drag racer or something."

"Well, you have to admit ... you were pretty bad."

"Oh, Jesus," I moaned. "There is no rest for the weary. I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I?"

Soda laughed at me and walked a few paces ahead. I made a half-hearted attempt to catch up. "I wouldn't count on that, sis," he said, and disappeared inside the building.

xxx

One of the nice things about this place was that the guy who was usually our waiter knew us as if we were old friends, and so needless to say he knew what we usually had to eat or drink. It made things a lot more convenient, and for the majority we just ordered the same thing every time. His name was Paul and he was a black man, but that didn't matter, at least not to me. I had never been racist or prejudice and quite frankly, I thought he was a very nice young man. I enjoyed listening to his dialect, too. He was from Louisiana, down in the Mississippi Delta region. The deep south.

"Hey, kee-ids," he said. "Yo' late."

We gave him a perplexed look. "Late?" I said.

"Yo' usually here by 'bout tee-en aftuh noon," he explained, looking at his watch. "It's now twunty aftuh. Y'all git into some truble on the way ovuh?"

"She drove," Steve explained, pointing to me. "Shitty driver."

I narrowed my eyes, which he knew was a threat. Good, I thought to myself. Then consider yourself threatened, Stevie. You deserve it, buddy.

"Aw, now don't feel poh-ly 'bout that, Miss Eleanor," Paul said with a grin. He always called me 'Miss Eleanor.' I thought it was cute. Very southern. "I'm not too good a drivuh muhself."

"It was only my first time," I told him, and he nodded.

"Thas' real good. Y'all will get bettuh. Jus' takes sum practice, thas' all. Now, I 'spect y'all want somethin' to drink? The usual?"

The 'usual' for the three of us was two Cokes and a lemonade. I had the lemonade. I figured I didn't need any more Coke here when we had plenty at home.

"That's right," Soda said. "The usual."

"All raht then. I'll bring that on ovuh."

When he was out of earshot, I said, "Did you hear what Paul said? He said I'd get better, and that it just takes practice. And you know what? He's absolutely right."

"El, let's just be done talkin' about your driving. Okay?"

"Fine," I said. "I have a French test to study for, anyway."

"No books?" Soda observed.

I shook my head and pulled about fifteen index cards out of my pocket; I liked learning French and whenever I had a test, I just brought them with me wherever I went in case I had any extra time. "I just use these," I explained. "See? It's got the English word on the front, and the French word – the answer – on the back. I just quiz myself." I switched positions and sat with my back to the window next to our booth, and stretched my legs out across Soda's lap. He didn't mind it. I did that with both of them, but since I was a bit annoyed with Steve at the moment, I didn't even bother sitting next to him. I usually sat next to my brother, anyway.

I read over my note cards until Paul came back with our drinks, and then I stopped him before he could walk off again. "Wait," I said. "Paul, you're from the deep south, right? You probably know some French words."

He nodded slowly. "Yeh, I-I ges I know a cupple. Why y'all ask me that, Miss Eleanor?"

I handed him my note cards. "I'm studying for my French test," I explained. "I thought maybe you could help me a little."

"Oh, I-I don't know 'bout that. I cayn't ... I mean, I ain't s'posed t' socialize too much with the white fokes. Only jus' a li'l bit."

"Oh, please? The test is on Monday but I don't want to fail. It'll only take a minute or two. I'm only stuck on a couple of the words."

He looked skeptical as he glanced around the diner, which was surprisingly empty for lunchtime on a Saturday afternoon, and when he was satisfied enough he grinned and took a seat next to Steve. "All raht," he said, "I'll help y'all. Which words is they?"

I smiled gratefully, and when at last we had finished, I think I had the words down really well. Paul had even taught me the correct pronunciation, which helped me a great deal, because often, after we finished tests, the teacher would go over the answers and call on us to answer them – in French, of course, because God forbid we should ever answer anything in English at this point in that class – and while I was fairly good at writing the words out, there were a lot that I couldn't pronounce to save my life.

Later on we had a bite to eat, and eventually I got over my anger and my annoyance with Steve's need to criticize me on my pitiful driving skills, and he seemed to get over _wanting _to criticize me – at least for the time being – and so we talked for a long time, but both of us noticed that Soda had been unusually quiet for the past twenty minutes. It was odd.

"What's wrong with _you?" _I wondered, and propped my head up on my hand, clearly displaying my interest in whatever his problem was.

"The school year's ending for you guys real soon," he said quietly.

Steve and I looked at each other. "Yeah," he said. "So?"

He drummed his fingers nervously on the tabletop, and his eyes clouded over. "So you and I'll be leaving."

xxx

**A/N: **Hm, I hope I got the dialect right. The furthest south I've ever been is Tennessee - no, actually, it was Mobile, Alabama, but I don't really remember because I was like five. Anyway, I just hope Paul's dialect seemed right. I'm from Chicago, and our dialect is very different (obviously, but still), so I'm a little embarrassed because it's probably wrong, lol.

Also—yes, I am very aware of the racial tension in the Sixties. Though the Sixties is my forte, I don't know for sure if places like the Dingo hired black people. If it's not right or unrealistic, or anything at all like that, don't kill me, just tell me so I can fix it. Thank you.

Yeah, anyway, Chapter Eleven coming soon!

Reviews are appreciated!


	11. Eleven

**A/N: **Just a note—I don't like that _Lost_ won't be back until February. I have a bit of a vendetta against ABC right now. Just sayin'. Anyway, here's Chapter Eleven!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Tangerine," written by Jimmy Page and performed by Led Zeppelin.

---

**Chapter Eleven:**

" … _thinking how it used to be / does she still remember times like these? … " _

_Leaving. _He'd said it with such finality in his voice that it actually frightened me. But none of us could avoid it any longer. Everyone at school was looking forward to summer vacation except me, because summer vacation for me meant boot camp for Soda and Steve. I knew that started almost right after school ended. And who knew? Maybe I'd never see them again. I hated to admit that to myself, but judging by the things they said about the war on the news and in the paper, that prospect had such a likelihood of happening that it was nearly impossible not to think about it once in a while.

On the flip side, however, maybe they'd come home in one piece and put the war behind them. That's what I hoped would happen.

The last day of school was on Tuesday, and Steve and my brother were leaving on Thursday. They were going to a big Army base in Texas that I couldn't remember the name of, and ... I just couldn't believe it was that soon. What was I going to do? I had one day with them. One day. A day and a half, maybe, if I was lucky. It was going to be so different without them. Soda promised he'd write when they got there – and apparently he'd get Steve to do it, too – but I found that pretty hard to believe, as I couldn't remember seeing either one of them even write out a full sentence before – at least voluntarily – let alone anything else.

Meanwhile I kept on trying to persuade them just to go to Canada, wait till the war was over, and then come back, even though I'd known all along that that wouldn't work. They wouldn't go, and the war wasn't going to be over for a while. Everybody knew that. President Johnson had even said back in January in his State of the Union address that he couldn't promise anyone that the war would be over this year, or the next. And when I had watched that on the television, it had confused me. He was the President of the United States of America. He was the one that was supposed to be trying to make an effort to put an end to the war. He was the one that was supposed to be pulling the troops out and letting the North and South Vietnamese settle their own differences, not keep on sending fresh troops over just to see more than half of them killed in the end. And for what?

It just hadn't made any sense. I knew it wasn't his fault – I didn't believe he had started the war – but just the fact that he couldn't even see it coming to an end in the next year and a half made me all the more unsure of him. I still believed what I'd said in the car the night we got home from the movies: Kennedy never would have let it go this far.

The worst part about it was that it was not even a declared war. Those soldiers really _were_ dying needlessly.

That evening I stepped outside for a while, trying to make sense of everything. I sat up on the hood of the car and focused on the stars for a long time, picking out constellations that I knew. I found the three that made up Orion's Belt, and one of the dippers; I always got the sizes mixed up so I wasn't sure which. The nights were still a bit chilly and my head was growing tired from looking up, so I wrapped my blanket around my shoulders and lay back against the windshield. Then I continued to gaze at the stars as they twinkled a million light-years away.

"That seat taken?" somebody called from the side doorway. I glanced up. It was Soda.

"No," I said. "No, I'm alone out here."

"Mind if I sit with you for a while?"

"Sure," I answered. "I'd like the company."

He walked over and the car lurched forward and down as he jumped up onto the hood himself, and I sat up a bit so I wouldn't slide off. "Well, you look pretty comfortable," he observed.

I nodded solemnly. "Maybe I'll sleep out here."

"You think?"

"No, probably not. I can't imagine a windshield would be a very good pillow."

"Yeah," he agreed, and lay back next to me. "I guess not." For a long time there was nothing, no dialogue. Just the crickets chirping, and the locusts. "You do this a lot? Or just – "

"Look, you can't avoid it anymore, Soda. The war. You can't cover it up with fake cheery conversation anymore. That's what I kept on doing."

"El, what are you talking – "

"You guys are going off to war in two days. Does that mean anything to you right now?"

"I am trying to make the best of the forty-eight odd hours I got left here, Eleanor. You think I wanted this to happen? You think I wanna go and fight for something I don't even believe in?"

"Frankly, I didn't think you believed anything about it at all. I always figured you thought it was some faraway war that only existed on television and in newspapers."

"Well I don't, and it does," he said. "El, Steve was right about you. You're a smart girl. You ain't stupid. You know what's going on."

I shook my head. "No," I said quietly. "I don't know what the hell's going on. I don't know a damn thing about anything."

"You always act like you do."

"But I don't. Okay? I don't. I guess Steve was right about that, too, wasn't he?" Tears had pooled in my eyes, but I blinked them back. I didn't want to give him the idea that I was crying at all. I had already convinced myself that I was fine.

"You never did answer my question, you know."

"Question regarding what?"

"The stars," he said. "I asked if you do this a lot."

"Only when my best friends get drafted," I replied.

"Guess that's a 'no,' then."

"I think I'll start, though. The weather's nice now and it's relaxing. You know, in eighth grade we learned about astronomy. The stars. We learned that the light that we see from them ... it could actually be from fifty years ago, and it took that long for it to get here. The light, I mean."

"And you _remembered _that? You're gonna be a junior in high school come fall and you remembered that from eighth grade."

"I always thought it was interesting."

"No, what's interesting is that you remembered that."

I laughed. "Okay, Soda. It's _so_ interesting."

"I'm gonna tell Steve that. He'll think it's interesting too."

"No, he'll just laugh. I'm not even sure he knows what 'interesting' means."

He laughed. "I don't know. He learns a lot from you."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You use big words like that a lot," he said. "I think he knows what 'interesting' means."

I nodded. "Where is Steve, anyway? I hardly saw him today."

"Last night at home? He's probably out getting drunk. Or getting laid. Or both."

"Ugh, I sure hope that's not what he's doing." I thought for a moment and then said, "You know, I'm kinda glad you and him are pretty different, Soda. I can't ever picture it being switched. I mean – I can't imagine him being like you or you being like him. You know?"

"You ever wonder why the three of us are friends in the first place when we're all so different?"

I nodded. "All the time. Then I get to thinking if we'll ever not be friends anymore."

"That won't happen," he assured me. "Not to us, anyway – we're related."

"I know, but I still wonder about it. I mean ... one day we're all gonna grow up and maybe move away and start families somewhere, God willing, and sometimes people get separated that way. It happens in the movies all the time. In real life, too."

"It ain't gonna happen to us," he told me. "I won't let it."

"I won't, either."

"Promise?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "Promise."

He extended his hand toward me. "It ain't legal 'til you shake on it."

"Is that absolutely necessary?"

"Hey, a promise is a promise, Eleanor. Even I know that." So I just laughed at him and shook his hand. Now it was legal, so to speak. "It's weird," he went on. "I keep trying to ... you know, picture myself growing up, getting married ... having a family somewhere, but ... I just can't see it. Like it's not supposed to happen, or something, you know?"

"That is strange. Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know," he conceded. "I can see you and Steve and Ponyboy – hell, even Darry and Two-Bit – with a family one day and some type of future, but I can't see mine. I could never really see Dally's or Johnny's, either, and they ended up dead."

That statement disturbed me greatly and I felt my insides tingle. "Don't imply that, Soda," I said quietly. "That isn't going to happen."

"How do you know that, Eleanor? How do you know I ain't gonna die over there?"

I didn't have an answer for that. I wanted to avoid it. I kept wanting to believe that he and Steve would come home from the war in one piece, unharmed. I knew that didn't always happen, though. And even if it did, they wouldn't be completely the same anyway. The Marine lieutenant I'd spoken with at the supermarket was emotionally distraught, emotionally exhausted, and I knew that happened to every veteran, no matter if they lost a limb or not. Even Daddy didn't talk about everything that happened to him in World War II. When I was little and didn't know any better, I had stupidly asked him if he'd killed anyone, or if he'd seen anyone get killed, and his eyes had clouded over and his voice seemed to shake when he used his nickname for me and said, "No, Nora. I didn't."

I'd only been six at the time but I had known that it was a lie. But whether it was wanting to keep me from the inevitable truths or not wanting to relive the memories at all, I'll never know. Maybe it was both.

And finally after moments of thinking and debating and convincing, I sighed and said, "I just wish ... I don't like when you say stuff like that. I mean, I don't know if it's your way of accepting it or what, but it just ... it bothers me." I stopped, waiting to see if he had anything to say back. But when he didn't I went on. "I don't know ... maybe you don't realize it, or something, but ... you and Steve are ... you guys are all I have, and I don't – "

"No, that ain't true, you have – "

"Let me finish," I said. "That's not what I meant. It _is _what I meant, sort of, but ... I mean, you guys are my best friends. You're like my other half, both of you are, and ... I mean, if something happens to one of you, then part of me will be gone forever, too. And I know you guys feel the same way about yourselves. But just the idea of it – _talking _about it, even – it scares me, to say the least. I don't like it."

"I'm sorry, Eleanor," he said quietly. "I didn't know that was how you felt about it. I didn't mean anything by that, it's just" – he faltered unexpectedly – "I'm scared, too."

"We're all scared, Soda. There's no way around that."

"I guess some more than others." We were quiet for a long time then, just allowing the moment to pass. It was never an easy topic. "You're not that bad, you know," he said at last.

"Hmm?"

"Driving. You're not that bad."

"Thanks, but I think I have to disagree. I'm horrible."

"Just takes practice, like Paul said."

I shrugged. "I guess. Steve said he'd teach me how to drive. Last July, when I turned fifteen. He said he'd teach me. I don't know how that's gonna happen now, though."

"Well, there's always time when we get back," my brother offered.

"When you get back I'll be seventeen and most likely will have my license by then. I'll probably just learn through school, or something, like normal people."

"El ..." He shook his head and jumped down off of the car, extending his hand to help me down as well. "There are no normal people. Now let's get inside, all right? It's getting late."

I nodded and followed him inside, but that night my sleep was not sound. I had a hard time falling asleep at all, but when I finally did I couldn't seem to stay asleep. I kept on waking up. The third and final time that I did, however, was because something had woken me up. I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes, surprised to see the lamp at my desk on. Steve was there and he was going through my drawers. I sat there for a minute, observing, and then finally said, "Steve Randle, what on God's green earth are you _doing?"_

"Quiet," he said, making sure to keep his voice low. "I'm trying to find some pictures."

"Of _what?" _

"Of you and me and Soda. I know you got a bunch. I wanted to take a couple with me. You know, to Vietnam. I know some guys do that."

"Well, that's all fine and great, but couldn't you do that tomorrow?" I looked over at my alarm clock. "It's three in the morning. And for God's sake, ask permission next time. You can't just go through other people's stuff like it's yours too."

"Why not? You hiding your diary in here, or something?"

"I don't have a diary. But that's not the point. You can't just – "

He ignored me and instead waved me over to the desk. "Help me pick a couple of these out."

"No. It's three in the morning, Steve. I'm going back to sleep. Maybe I'll help you tomorrow. Good night."

"Eleanor," he said, and something in his voice made me stop.

"You're serious," I said. It was more a statement than a question, but he nodded anyway. "But ... why now? I mean ... you have all day tomorrow."

"I don't have time tomorrow," he explained. "I got a bunch of shit to take care of before I ..." He shook his head and turned back around so that he was no longer facing me. "Just please come and help me out for a minute."

"Fine," I groaned, and ambled over to the desk to stand next to him. "How'd you know I kept all my pictures in here?"

"Well, where else?"

I shook my head, defeated. "I think you know me too well."

"Ten years is a real long time to know someone, El."

My eyes widened. "Ten years?"

"I've known you since you were six," he explained. "You're turning sixteen in a month, right? Ten years."

"Wow," I said slowly, and bit my lip. "It's weird. I feel like I've known you longer than that."

He shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just going by what I remember. I met Soda at school and then I met you, and – "

"And the rest is history," I laughed. I glanced over to the opposite side of the room, where Soda and Ponyboy were still asleep. I wondered why they hadn't woken up yet. If people were having a conversation three feet away from me while I was sleeping, I'd be up in an instant. But I still didn't want to risk the chance, so I turned back to Steve and said, "Maybe we should go out to the living room, or something. I don't want them to wake up."

He nodded and followed me out and said, "You're a very thoughtful sister, Eleanor. You know that?"

I smiled and turned on one of the lights, and then took a seat on the couch. "Well, thank you. That's a very nice thing for you to say. And no offense, but you don't say very many nice things to begin with."

"I'm trying to be nice to you, in case I never see you again." I rolled my eyes and looked away. "What? Did I say something wrong?"

"It's just that ... I don't like talking about that," I told him. "Me and Soda already talked about it earlier."

"Well, I wasn't there, so I didn't know. I'm sorry."

I nodded. "Look, let's just get this over with, all right? I'm tired. I wanna go back to bed."

He sat down beside me and spread out a handful of photographs on the coffee table in front of us. "I was thinking maybe two," he told me. "Three at the most. I know they take most of your personal stuff when you get to boot camp, and I don't want a lot of 'em anyway. Just a couple."

"Geez," I said quietly, my eyes scanning all of them. "I forgot I had a lot of these. I mean, I didn't know I had so damn many. I guess there's a lot to be said for the three of us, isn't there?"

"Yeah, and there's a lot more in your drawer." I looked up at him, still a tad upset that he had gone through my drawers without asking me. "El, I didn't look through any of your other stuff, okay? I don't know why it's such a secret, anyway, if you don't have a diary."

"I told you that wasn't the point. It's just not right to go through people's stuff without asking permission first. You wanna remember that for the future?"

"Yeah, sure. Now you're the one that wants to go back to bed. Wanna get this over with, or not?"

"Yeah," I said, "I do."

"Okay. So which ones you like the best?"

I hesitated a moment, and then said, "I don't know. They're all nice. I like all of them."

"That was my problem. I like all of 'em, too."

"Maybe you should take one color one, and one black-and-white one. Here, I'll put them into two groups so it'll be easier." I separated them both and discovered that there were six in each, so there had been twelve in all. No wonder he hadn't been able to decide. Twelve was a lot. "I think maybe the color ones have been in my drawer for too long," I conceded. "They're beginning to fade a little."

"Whatever. As long as you can still see 'em."

"Look, here's a copy of the beach one, from two years ago. I think you should take that one. It's one of my favorites."

"I saw the same one on top of your desk. I didn't wanna ask if I could take that one 'cause I know you like it, so that's good you got a copy of it. It's one of my favorites, too."

I started laughing then. "Remember what happened right after my mom took that picture?"

"Yeah. I fell over."

"Yeah, you did, and you spilled our drinks all over us, and my mom made us go rinse off in the water."

He looked closer at the picture, studying it carefully for a moment. "I wondered why you looked almost a little tense right there," he said. "I think you knew what was coming."

I grabbed it from him. "I do not look tense. I look completely relaxed."

"Almost like you expected it or something."

"I didn't, okay? I didn't expect it. At all. Here." I gave the picture back to him. "Take that. Now pick one of the black-and-white ones. Please, so I can go back to bed."

"What's your rush, anyway?"

"I'm simply very tired," I explained. "I haven't been getting much sleep lately. Not since – "

"The draft notices," he finished. "Yeah, neither have I."

My eyes filled again with tears for the second time that night, but this time I wasn't so sure I would be able to stop them. "I don't want you guys to go," I said. "I know that's pretty obvious, but it's just ... it's not fair. They're drafting the wrong people."

"It doesn't matter who they draft, El. They're all gonna be the wrong people. The only right ones for it are the ones who enlist, 'cause the rest of us don't know what the hell we're doing or why we're doing it. Me? I don't know shit about what I'm supposed to be fighting for. Communism. That's all I hear about. But I don't even really know what it is, or why it's so bad."

I nodded and let that sink in. "Steve, you remember the night you said you thought I was smart?"

"Yeah," he said. "I remember. Why?"

"Because I think you're pretty smart, too. You guys – you and Soda – you don't give yourself enough credit. You don't think you're smart at all but I do. I think you've got a lot of potential, even though it doesn't seem like it sometimes."

He nodded and draped his arm across my shoulders like he and my brother so often did. I could tell he appreciated that. "Thanks, Eleanor. How about we finish this now, huh?"

"Okay," I said, and we did, except the decision was much more difficult for these than it was for the color photos. I don't really know why. Finally we narrowed it down to two, though, and then to one. The date on it said 1964 – it was only three years old but we looked really young, at least younger than we did now. We used to have a swing-set in the backyard, and that's where the picture was taken, but two years ago there was this terrible storm, and the wind was so strong that it blew it down. The wood had cracked in many places and much of it had been damaged by hail. Unfortunately it was irreplaceable, and I really liked that swing-set. My dad had just said that it was a sign that we were growing up. Maybe he had been right.

"Well," Steve said at last, "since we're done now, you can go back to bed if you want."

I nodded once and stood up, walking around the coffee table towards the hallway. "Thanks," I said. "I think I will."

I was halfway down the hallway when I heard him say, "Wait." I turned around to face him, and waited.

"You sleeping there tonight?" I said.

"Yeah. Uh, El ... we're, you know, leaving ... Thursday morning. Early. Were you planning on going with us? I mean, to the bus depot? We have to take the bus down there."

I shook my head. "I don't think I'd be able to just watch you guys leave like that," I said. "I'll say goodbye Wednesday night."

He nodded, and I continued on until I got to my bedroom door. "Hey," he said, just before I went inside. "Try not to worry too much, all right? I mean, soon enough we'll be back home and telling you war stories."

"I'll try," I said quietly. "I will. I'll try."

Wednesday seemed to be a quiet, somber day for everyone. The air outside was humid, but it was a pleasant sort of humid, the kind you could tolerate. Steve had left fairly early to "take care of some things," as he had put it, and Soda and I spent almost the whole morning walking up and down the street and back again, but there didn't seem to be much to talk about. Around noon Ponyboy came out too and walked with us for a while, but there was still no real dialogue. It was not an awkward silence; it was more reflective, if anything.

"You have to write to me, you know," I said at last. "To all of us."

"What are you gonna do if I don't?"

"Not much I can do, is there? Just bombard you with letters of my own, I suppose."

"Eleanor and I'll keep you busy reading, at least," Pony said, and I nodded in agreement.

"You'll think you've never read so much in your life. And you don't even like it."

Soda grinned at us and we couldn't help but smile right back. "Don't worry, guys," he said. "I'll write. I won't be very good at it, though."

"Don't worry about that," I admonished. "You're not writing a novel, you know. Just letters. You've written a letter before."

"I'll do it, Eleanor. I'll write you guys. I'll even get Steve to write, too."

I looked over at my younger brother, who seemed to be stifling laughter, as he and I both knew that the prospect of Steve ever wanting to write a letter at all – even to me – was highly unlikely. "Well, I will be waiting for that."

Soda draped his arm across my shoulders and walked faster. "Let's get back home," he said. "We've been walking a long time."

Later on that evening Steve and Two-Bit came over and had dinner with us, but nobody spoke. There wasn't a single word. I kept glancing up and around to see if anybody even looked as if they _might_ say something, but there was nothing. I could hardly believe that. Even after we were finished and the table was cleared, everybody went on about their business as if nothing was wrong – but voices were silent. I guessed that maybe everyone had the same thought: What were you supposed to say to someone who was about to go off to war? 'Break a leg'?

Right.

I went to bed at nine-thirty that night. That was the earliest I'd ever gone to bed during the summer. Just before sleep claimed me, I remembered telling Steve the night before that I'd say goodbye to them tonight because I didn't want to go with them to the bus depot, but that hadn't happened. Maybe I had just been afraid to say something, because nobody had spoken in over an hour. I should have, though. There were a lot of things I should have done. Now just because I hadn't done them, I could have kicked myself.

I awoke again just before the sun came up. The atmosphere outside was thick with fog, and I suddenly remembered. I wanted to catch them before they left. Now it was real. It was really happening, after all of the time we'd spent avoiding it. Ponyboy must have gotten up, too, for his bed was empty. I wasn't going with them to the bus depot but I put my shoes on anyway. I still don't know why I did that. My mind was elsewhere and I wasn't thinking rationally.

The living room was empty, but I did hear a car door close outside, and suddenly my eyes were as wide as a deer caught in headlights and I raced from my bedroom doorway to the porch at the front of the house. The fog was too thick to see much, but I could make out the smoky silhouette of our car. I saw Ponyboy standing near it, too, and I could see he was crying, maybe. Soda was talking to him. I walked over slowly. Maybe the next step I took would send me careening down into some black abyss, and then I'd wake up in my bed and this would all be a dream. There would never be any draft notices. Things would be normal. I stopped paying attention to the direction that I was walking, and after a moment I ran right into Soda and Steve.

"Are you guys" – I stumbled over my words and felt as if I were going to choke – "are you guys ... leaving now?"

"Yeah," Soda said slowly. "Yeah, El, we are."

I pushed my hair back from my face and shook my head sadly. "All along I thought this might be a bad dream. A nightmare. It's not, though, is it? It's real."

They looked at one another, knowing what was coming next, and the moment the first tear rolled down my cheek they pulled me into an embrace, and I held onto both of them for a long time, as if my very life depended upon not letting go. I closed my eyes and for the first time in a long while, I just let the tears fall, because I knew it was real now. I could no longer deny the reality of the war, no matter how much I wanted to. I could no longer deny the reality that they were going to be trained to kill, that they were going to become soldiers, that they were going to be fighting for a stupid thing twelve-thousand miles away.

That they could maybe even die there in that strange foreign country.

I think we stood there like that for a long time. The dialogue was broken up. Someone would start to say someone else's name, but they'd never finish. Eventually I allowed myself to let go, and they did too, and I wiped the remaining tears from my eyes, but they kept coming faster than I could make them disappear.

"Eleanor, listen to me," Soda said, and held onto my wrists so tightly I was afraid he might break them. "We're coming back. Okay? We're not gonna let the war take us. Understand?"

I nodded. "I'm so sorry ... I'm acting like a baby ... I can't – "

"El," Steve interrupted, watching me carefully. His eyes were hard and cold. He nodded to Soda, as if to say that he could take it from here. "You ain't actin' like a baby. You can't help it, honey. Just calm down for a minute, okay? Take a deep breath."

I shook my head. Why did he always call me that when I was upset? No one else did. It didn't mean anything. It was just a friendly little pet name. But still. It bothered me. And he never sounded that nice. Never. "No. I can't. I can't do it."

"Eleanor, really, just – "

"I can't do it!" I sobbed. Both of them glanced at one another again, knowing that I no longer meant my crying. I couldn't do it. I couldn't deal with them leaving. I couldn't deal with the fact that one of them might die, or both. It was so real that it hurt. "I can't do it! I can't let you leave! Not this war!"

Darry came around the other side of the car then and ushered the two of them toward it. "Come on," he said. "She just needs some time. She'll be fine."

"I don't think she will, Darry," Steve said.

Soda shook his head. "No. She ain't gonna be fine. She'll stop crying, but she ain't gonna be fine." And then quietly, so I was the only one that heard, he said, "Neither are we."

With one final wave goodbye, they got into the car, and Darry started it, and then they drove away, where the fog and the thick mist swallowed it up until there was no trace that it had ever been there at all.

I stepped back next to Ponyboy, trying to control myself. I didn't want to scare him or upset him anymore than I knew he already was.

"You think we're gonna see them again?" he wondered. His voice was tiny, like a little boy's.

Inside I was shaking but outside I had calmed some, just enough so that my sobs no longer sounded like desperate chokes, and I reached for my little brother and pulled him into an embrace, and he allowed me to hold onto him for a long time, because he knew that I didn't have my best friends to hold onto anymore.

"I don't know," I replied quietly, listening to the fog swallow my words just as it had the car. "I don't know."

xxx

**A/N: **Sorry this was so long. I was trying to cram a bunch of stuff into one chapter, because I have so much more for this story and I don't want to waste a lot of time getting there. Seems to me though that longer chapters are preferred, so I guess I don't have much to apologize for. :D

Reviews are appreciated!


	12. Twelve

**A/N: **Hooray for snow days. Here is Chapter Twelve. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "The Wind," written and performed by Cat Stevens.

---

**Chapter Twelve: **

" … _I listen to my words / but they fall far below … "_

All along I was sure I would have been able to maintain better control over myself. After my crying had finally subsided, I tried going back to sleep, as I was awfully tired and had a headache, but it didn't work. I laid there and stared at the ceiling most of the time, with no motivation to do anything. My cat, who always seemed to sense when I was upset, stood on top of my stomach for a long time and meowed until I reached down and petted her, though I suspect this was all she was after in the first place as she only inched up further, until her front paws sat just below my collarbone. I didn't mind this too much – she was a relatively lightweight cat – but after a while I did have to move her, and so she settled for curling up beside me and falling asleep instead. Her tranquility and complete satisfaction with life calmed me down some, and I continued to pet her until I was nearly asleep myself.

I must have fallen asleep after a while, though, for when I awoke the sky was dark and the stars were out, just as they'd been for the past few nights. It could have just been me, but the room felt ungodly chilly, and so I reached over and opened the window a crack, disturbing Inka, who stood up and stretched and moved to the end of the bed. I still felt cold. But I was sure that it was only me.

I wasn't depressed, no. I didn't feel depressed at all. What I did feel like was going back to sleep. Was this normal?

I didn't get a chance to answer that because the bedroom door inched open slowly, throwing a long trail of light from the hallway across the floor, and Darry came in, looking exhausted himself.

"Eleanor," he said, "are you okay?"

"I wanted to take a nap," I replied absently.

"I know. But are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I said. "I was tired. That's all. I had a headache."

"Eleanor, listen" – he faltered, as if not exactly sure what he wanted to say – "I know you're upset about all this, but – "

"I'm fine," I lied. "I'm okay, Darry. Really."

He sighed then, giving up, maybe realizing that it was no use, that it was stupid to try and reason with me anymore. Even I was finding that difficult. Maybe it was because it was so much easier to deny than it was to accept. I was too good at denial.

"Well" – he stopped short again, regarding me awkwardly – "we're gonna have dinner now. You feel up to joinin' us?"

I nodded. "I guess so. I'm starving."

Maybe that was a good sign.

"Oh, wait," I said, before he left the room. "I had an idea earlier. I mean ... not earlier. While I was sleeping. I thought of something."

"What is it?"

My face burned scarlet. "I-I don't remember. I'm sorry ..."

He nodded, but looked rather vexed. I can't say I wasn't, either. Why couldn't I remember? "Yeah. Well, when ya think of it, let me know, all right?"

I didn't respond. Instead I waited for him to leave, and when he did I sat up and picked up my Eiffel Tower statue, rolling it around between my fingers, trying to remember what it was that I had forgotten. It was a good idea, too – at least, it had seemed like a good idea. I didn't know if it was all that great anymore. Maybe that's why I couldn't remember it.

I let my eyes wander away from my statue over to the pictures below the windowsill. I skipped over Kennedy and stopped at the Ferris wheel one, frowning. What was so great about that stupid fair, anyway? Why did we have to go every year? And why did I always let them drag me onto that thing? I hated Ferris wheels.

I shook my head dismissively and reached over to turn on the radio while staring absent-mindedly at the last photograph, the one of my father in the Navy. He looked handsome, and quite content, as if the war wasn't bothering him, although the expression in his eyes suggested otherwise. I wondered what the Second World War was like. I knew it wasn't nearly as unpopular as this one. I didn't know much about it, anyway. I had been young when he spoke of his role in the war, and about his friends who'd joined the Army or the Marines. They didn't have the Air Force back then, he'd said. It was the Army Air Corps.

But I still hadn't really understood. He told us about a friend of his who'd joined the Army and had gotten killed. They were good friends, he'd said. Because of that, though, he always remembered that man's unit, and would sometimes repeat it absently. _Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 501st Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. _I remembered it, now, too.

Though when he would tell us about it, the only thing I could ask was why in the world they would name a business after some guy named Charlie.

Why was I even remembering all of this? It wasn't important anymore. I had to stop thinking about things that weren't important. My headache was back. I decided I'd take some aspirin after I ate.

"Eleanor, you comin'?"

I hadn't realized my eldest brother was standing there, and I wondered for how long. I turned around quickly, placing my Eiffel Tower statue haphazardly back on the windowsill. "Yes," I told him. "I'm coming."

We ate in silence. This had been going on for the past few days now. Nobody seemed to have anything to say. It was so different, so absolutely _quiet _without my brother and Steve. Sometimes I enjoyed a certain degree of peace around the house, but this time was different. This time I didn't. This time I missed the chaos, the cacophony, the incessant chatter and laughter and loud music.

I wondered how long it was going to be like this.

"So ..." I began, wanting to at least start some type of conversation. I looked over at Ponyboy, but his expression was blank, and I knew I was on my own. I remembered I had a question, anyway. I thought it might be important later on. "Is anyone gonna take over Soda's job at the gas station?"

Without even looking up from his plate, Darry said, "No. But you're gonna get _yourself _a job."

His reply came as such a shock to me that I choked a bit on my food, and I had to take a long sip of my lemonade just to regain composure of myself again. That had to be some sort of joke. "What? Are you kidding? I – "

"What'd ya think we were gonna do, Eleanor?" he said. "We all gotta make some sacrifices to get by, all right? Without your brother here, me workin' two jobs just ain't gonna cut it."

I guess I sometimes took things for granted. Some things I didn't want to deal with, so I just pushed them to the back of my mind for the cobwebs to claim. I had to stop doing that, too. I knew we had to make sacrifices. That was inevitable, and I wasn't angry for having to do this. I was angry because nobody had consulted me first, nobody had come up to me prior to all of this and said, "Look, this is what's gonna have to happen."

"Fine," I agreed submissively, to which both of my brothers looked relieved. Maybe they had thought, given the current circumstances, that I would have put up more of a fight. "When?"

"Sometime this month," Darry told me. "At least two days a week."

"Oh. Well, what about when school starts?"

"You'll just have to work after school."

That wasn't so bad. I didn't have anything spectacular that I'd rather be doing, anyway, as without Soda and Steve here my social life was basically nonexistent. "I'm sorry," I said at last. "I shouldn't have acted like ... I just ... I'm sorry."

"We're all goin' through a rough time here, Eleanor," Darry said. "You don't have to be sorry."

"Then why do I feel like I should be?" I didn't receive an answer, but I wasn't expecting one. I did, however, remember what it was that I had forgotten. "My idea," I said quietly. "I remembered it."

"Yeah? What is it?"

"I was thinking ... I mean, it's just an idea ... I was thinking I might want to volunteer at the VA hospital."

"Isn't that where they send the injured soldiers?" Ponyboy asked me, and I nodded.

But Darry shook his head. "No," he said. "No, you're not."

"How come? It's a nice thing to do. They don't get many volunteers, anyway."

"Because," he said, "you got guys there missin' arms and legs and God knows what else, and I just don't want you to ... I don't want it to scare you."

"That stuff doesn't bother me, Darry. Don't you think I see enough blood on this side of town, with all of the rumbles and fights and everything? And besides, what if Soda or Steve came back missing an arm or a leg? Do you think I'd be scared then?" I waited for him to answer, but when he didn't, I continued. "And if you're worried about the guys there trying to pick me up, or something ... I can take care of myself. I'm sure most of them are too messed up to notice as it is."

"Well" – he was looking for another excuse – "you gotta start workin', you know."

"Yes, but there are five other days in the week."

"Look," he said, his voice hard and his eyes cold, "you're not volunteerin' at no hospital, you hear? You wanna hang out with wounded soldiers so bad, go be an Army nurse in Vietnam. Maybe you'll run into your brother."

He got up then and took his plate to the kitchen, and it took everything I had not to say something smart in return, but then I got up too and stepped out on the back porch. Ponyboy followed me.

"Hey," he said. "Why do you wanna volunteer at that hospital so bad?"

"Not bad," I said. "It was just an idea. A thought."

"I know. But why?"

"I guess because ... I don't know. I feel terrible for those guys, and ... I mean, what if something bad happens to Soda or Steve and they get sent there? I know guys get sent to Japan or somewhere like that when they're injured first ... but what about when they come back to the States? What if it's them? They could be all messed up with blood and bandages, and none of us would be the wiser ... any one of those soldiers could be them ..."

"So you wanna do it because you think all of those soldiers are gonna be Soda or Steve?"

"No," I said quickly. "I mean ... I guess that's part of it, but different ... I wanna do it because I think it's a nice thing to do. A good way to contribute to society. And maybe I could help some of them, you know? I'm no doctor, but some of them are depressed – you know, shell shock, and stuff like that – and I could talk to them, and talking helps sometimes. Like the way you're supposed to talk to someone who's in a coma, or after a car crash, or – "

"You really miss them, don't you?"

I looked at him quizzically. "Miss who?"

"Soda and Steve."

"Well, yes, of course I do, but ... why do you ask?"

"Because you act funny when something's wrong, and something's wrong and you're actin' funny."

"Act funny how?"

"You don't stop talkin'," he observed. "You just go on and on. Sometimes it's not even important stuff. You just talk."

I realized how right he was. Sometimes I just did it without even knowing I was doing it. I'd chatter on about anything and everything and nothing all at once, for the mere purpose of avoiding the real dilemma. After Kennedy, after Mama and Daddy died, after Johnny and Dallas ... I just _talked. _And one time Soda said I talked _too _much and Steve told me to shut up. I got very mad at both of them.

I decided I remembered things too much, too.

"I don't mean to," I said quietly. "I guess it's just a nervous habit."

"They're gonna be fine, all right?"

I nodded, but I didn't want to agree. In a year, anything could happen. "You know, it's gonna be real quiet in our room without Sodapop," I said.

"But he falls asleep so fast," Pony said, trying to get a laugh out of both of us, "how would you know the difference?"

It did get me to laugh a little bit, only because it was true. He was quick to fall asleep, though sometimes we'd all just stay up half the night and talk, which was something that I always enjoyed because then I could ask them all of the answerless questions that I had. And then when we _really _couldn't sleep, we'd strike up a game of Would You Rather? or Have You Ever?, and then Darry would wake up from his own slumber after somehow miraculously hearing our giggling, and he'd come in and tell us to quiet the hell down and would we _please _go to sleep already?

I was going to miss that a lot. I knew those nights were not going to be the same without Soda. Or Steve. Nothing was.

Damn.

xxx

**A/N: **So yes, there is Chapter Twelve. I'll have Chapter Thirteen along as soon as I can.

And my birthday is on Sunday. Sweet sixteen!  
: )

Reviews are appreciated!


	13. Thirteen

**A/N:** I very much appreciate all of the kind reviews and am glad that you are all enjoying the story. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders, _"Shapes of Things," written by Paul Samwell-Smith, Keith Relf, and Jim McCarty, and performed by The Yardbirds, or the few bits and pieces that I borrowed from a letter in the book, _Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. _

---

**Chapter Thirteen:**

" … _come tomorrow, may be a soldier / come tomorrow, may I be bolder than today … "_

Two months ago my brother and my best friend were drafted into the Army. Now they're at boot camp learning how to be soldiers. Learning how to kill. Though I don't think the latter is terribly unfamiliar to them. Anyone can kill, or use a gun. I'm supposing, however, that they're learning the right way to do it. But is there a "right" way to kill? I never thought so.

It was nice to be out of school for the summer, but it was incredibly boring. And I found myself worrying a lot more than I used to. I didn't like worrying; I liked being at peace with myself. I tried burning incense in my room but that didn't help as I'd hoped it would, though I did it anyway because it was relaxing and I enjoyed the aroma.

I tried to go through the motions as I always did, even though it was difficult. A couple of times I walked over to the record store and spent a few hours just perusing the shelves and testing out some of the albums in the special listening booths they had there. It seemed to bring me some peace of mind, and I ended up buying a couple of the albums that I found myself listening to most. And then I'd just stack them up on my record player and listen to them over and over and try and learn them on my guitar, sometimes even falling asleep in the process. Of course I still worried, but I couldn't figure out why I felt more mellowed out now.

The goodbyes are over, I thought. Maybe that's what I'd dreaded most of all, and now that they're over I can just float, because maybe this'll all drift by like a dream. And then it'll become a thing of the past. And then I won't have any reason to worry anymore, or to be scared.

On Monday afternoon it was lovely out, so I sat outside on the front lawn and worked on making a dandelion garland for the inside of my window. There were still a bunch left over from spring, and I thought that it would be a nice touch. Inka, who was too scared to go anywhere near the street, lay in the grass next to me, just enjoying the sun and the warm air. Darry was at work and Ponyboy was inside watching a show on the TV. My garland was just about finished when I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of somebody's voice on the opposite side of the fence.

"Those're just gonna die, y'know."

I looked up. It was the mailman. He was leaning against the chain-link, watching, and I blushed, wondering how long he'd actually been standing there.

"I know," I said simply.

"So why're you doing that?"

"I thought it would look nice over my window," I explained, and held it up so that he could see. It was long enough, that was for sure.

"For a few hours, yeah, but in a few days from now?" He shook his head. "Dandelions don't live very long after you pick 'em. You shoulda just left 'em there. Then they'd last longer."

"They were some of the last ones left in our yard," I countered.

The mailman shook his head again and laughed at me. "All the more reason. Here's your guys' mail, by the way. Oh" – he stopped and handed me one from the pile – "think you might appreciate this one. It's from your brother. Saw the return address. Fort Sam Houston. What is he, a Marine?"

I furrowed my brow. "Army," I told him. "He got drafted. Don't you read the news?"

"Course I do," he said, and tipped his hat to me, starting down the sidewalk for the next house. "I'm a mailman, ain't I?"

I watched him walk for a moment and then turned away, and glanced down at my brother's letter tersely. Well, how do ya like that, El? I thought to myself. He actually wrote. At this point I had no longer expected it. In fact, to be real honest, I'd actually forgotten about it, mainly because I'd never really believed it when he said he'd write. But now that he had I wasn't exactly sure what to make of it.

I left my flower garland for the earth and scooped up the kitty cat and brought her inside with me, and then set the rest of the mail onto the table for Darry to sift through when he got home. There was no doubt in my mind that most of it was bills; I couldn't think of anybody else who would send us anything different. Except this.

"Look," I said to Ponyboy, waving the envelope at him. "Soda wrote me a letter."

Interested, he watched anxiously and wondered, "You gonna read it?"

I don't know what gave him the idea that I wouldn't, even though I was going to, eventually, but I just shrugged and said, "I don't know."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what it means. I don't know."

An awkward silence seemed to descend for a moment and Pony watched me while I continued to stare at the envelope, as if at any given moment it would burst into flames and cause me to drop it.

"Well, aren't ya gonna open it?" he pressed.

"I will later," I said. "Not right now."

I didn't seem to be in any particular rush to open it, and I wasn't sure why, but there had to be a reason for it. It wasn't fear, and it wasn't apprehension. Perhaps I was still in denial about the whole thing.

I padded across the living room and down the hall to my bedroom, the cat following close at my heels, and closed the door behind me. I would read the letter a little bit later but for now I simply tossed it onto my desk and flopped onto my bed, lighting my incense and a cigarette to match.

Now that was weird. I never smoked. Hardly ever. Between drags I just gaped at it like I'd never seen the thing before in my life, and when I was finished I crushed it out on the sill and tossed it through the window. The incense, I knew, would rid the room of the stench.

I cooked dinner that night but we ate later than normal because I'd fallen asleep for about an hour after Darry got home, so needless to say we all felt pretty famished. Two-Bit even joined us that evening, which seemed to be becoming rarer nowadays. Ever since Soda and Steve had left for Fort Sam Houston, he seemed to go out more and we didn't see much of him. Maybe he was still a bit in denial too. I think maybe we all were, in a sense. When there's a war going on twelve-thousand miles away from home, you tend to follow the belief that it's not real.

That it doesn't exist.

My mind elsewhere, I didn't notice when Ponyboy asked me again if I'd read Soda's letter. "Did you read it yet?" he prodded.

"Read what?" Darry wondered.

"Yeah, I did," I said, but I hadn't. I hadn't had the time yet, but now that he'd brought it up again, I wanted to.

"Well, what'd he say?"

"Read what?" Darry asked again, his voice stern and demanding.

"Eleanor got a letter from Soda today," Ponyboy explained. Darry glanced over at me, eyebrows raised, most likely as surprised as I was.

"How's he doin'?" Two-Bit asked me, catching me off-guard.

"Oh ... fine," I answered with a blunt nod. "He's doing fine. They both are." I didn't know if that was even true or not, and I blushed furiously and turned my attention back to Darry. "Could I be excused? I have to take a shower."

He seemed annoyed with the fact that I hadn't eaten that much but allowed me to leave the table anyway, and I smiled rather curtly and assured him that I'd stick what was left of my food in the fridge and eat later if I got hungry.

What I really wanted to do now though was read that letter. I'd put it off long enough.

Retrieving it from where I'd left it on the desk, I walked down to the bathroom and busied myself with getting the envelope open. It had said FREE on the front, in the top right hand corner where a stamp would normally go. The United States didn't make their self-sacrificing military men pay for postage; it was the least the government could do for them.

In the bathroom I locked the door and turned on the shower, just to make my request to be excused believable, but instead of actually taking a shower I sat down on the toilet and read the letter slowly, my mind taking in the words like a kindergartener just learning this skill for the first time.

_11 June, 1967_

_Dear Eleanor,_

_We have been told that our whole company will be shipping out to Vietnam after AIT. We will get a two-week leave, of course, and then we will go._

A two-week leave! That meant I'd get to see them one last time. What great news. But what was AIT?

_We are in the third training brigade. Our company commander and our battalion and brigade commanders told us that there is no sense trying to fool ourselves, we are going for sure. They act like it is an everyday experience, and that we should feel that way too. I don't really mind going anymore – you know how I like thrills – but there are some guys here who just won't make it, and I don't think they will make it out alive. _

I wrinkled my nose. What a comforting thought.

_But I don't want you to worry, or anything. When I know it's time to worry then you can worry too. Steve wants to add something now, I better let him. _

_Love,  
Soda_

I couldn't help worrying, though. How could I not?

But I read further, happy that he'd sounded okay and glad that Steve was writing a little bit too. Hey, it was a start.

_Eleanor – _

_Okay, three things._

_Number one: I miss you a lot._

_Number two: I changed my mind. I don't really want to go to Vietnam anymore. Sorry if I confused you._

_Number three: Soda didn't tell you this, but I will. We're both really mad about it. They cut our hair off. You know how you have to have real short hair in the military? Well, now you can bet we look real tuff. Wait'll you see us when we come home on leave – you're gonna laugh._

_Steve_

I couldn't help it, but I was already laughing. I just couldn't picture them without that thick greasy hair of theirs, and just simply attempting to form an image of them without it made every bad feeling I'd had prior to reading this vanish.

It was just too funny.

xxx

**AIT: **Advanced Infantry Training; the period following Basic Training

**A/N: **Well, on a random note, my birthday is on Sunday and my parents and I and my brother are going to see _Bobby _that day, which makes me happy, but reviews make me happy too. So make my sweet sixteen extra sweet and review a lot. : )


	14. Fourteen

**A/N: **Thanks for the birthday wishes—I had a really great one. New digital camera as well as a Hendrix album were probably my favorite gifts, as well as seeing _Bobby, _which I highly recommend you go see if you haven't yet. It's completely worth it. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Rock Me," written by John Kay and performed by Steppenwolf.

---

**Chapter Fourteen:**

" … _everybody's ills you know it fills her with compassion / that's why she tries to save the world alone … "_

The day before I was to start looking for a job, I wrote a letter back to Soda and Steve. I told them that I was glad to hear from them, and all about how Darry was making me get a job and how I wanted to volunteer at the VA hospital. But most of all I wanted to know what boot camp was like, and what the other guys in their platoon were like, or if they'd made any friends there at all so far. I didn't mention anything about Vietnam and I didn't ask them when they were scheduled to ship out. That part still didn't exist yet.

I wasn't going to allow it to exist until I absolutely had to. Of course I understood _why _they were there – they weren't playing soldiers with toy guns at summer camp – but they were safe and alive and not yet involved in war, and that's all that mattered for now.

I didn't ask them to write back, as I knew that by the time they received it they'd probably be too busy learning how to maintain a rifle properly to bother, but at the end I did tell them that I missed them and that I loved them, and then I stopped because I couldn't think of anything more to say. Maybe that's all you need to say, I thought, and with a quick nod of agreement to myself I finished with _Love, El._

Darry was at work and I figured he wouldn't mind too much if I took a little walk to mail the letter, and so I told Ponyboy to let him know where I was if he decided to stop in at all. Busied with two jobs, however, I doubted that he would, but often times it was better to be safe than sorry.

I took my time walking because it was such a gorgeous day, and the temperature was perfect. There was a slight breeze that evened out the humidity, and the air smelled like flowers after a rainstorm. Our side of town didn't even look as pathetic and rundown as it usually did, and I wished every day could be like this.

It didn't take too long to get into town though, and after I dropped my letter into a mailbox, I stood there for a moment and thought. I had an idea. I knew from living here that the VA hospital was only a ten minute walk away from where I was standing, give or take, and it suddenly occurred to me that I could volunteer in secret if I wanted to. And I wanted to. I could just walk there right that very minute and ask about their volunteer program.

I didn't have anything better to do. Nowhere to go, no one to see. What did I have to lose?

From the outside the VA hospital looked like any other hospital. I don't know what I had expected – maybe a military emblem or an eagle or some gung ho statue of a brave soldier poised and ready with his weapon – but there was nothing that marked it different from a regular hospital. All that it said was Veterans Administrations with a red cross next to it.

I don't really know what I expected to find when I walked inside, either, but I went in anyway, despite my apprehensions, because this was important to me now. Inside, the lobby looked like a regular hospital too, all nice and neat and orderly. Displayed in frames on the walls were all of the military seals – including the Coast Guard and the National Guard – and in various areas were pretty paintings of oceans and cottages and forests, and I even saw one that depicted the boats landing at Normandy on D-Day in 1945, but it was a much more glorified image: no blood. No death.

On the wall opposite that was a beautiful painting somebody had done of the infamous flag raising at Iwo Jima. The original photograph was so famous now, and every time I saw it, it gave me the chills. There was just something so touching and so moving about it. The camaraderie, maybe, or the courage. I couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly.

I walked on down the hall until I came to an office on the left, and inside a woman sat behind a desk, focused on her paperwork. As I neared closer she looked up and removed her reading glasses, and seemed almost shocked to see a teenage girl here. She had pretty blue eyes and dark hair set in a nice flip that reminded me of Natalie Wood, and she wore a little gold crucifix around her neck and a wedding ring on her finger.

"Good afternoon, young lady," she said politely. "What can I do for you?"

"I was curious about your volunteer program," I explained. At this statement her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to speak but then changed her mind and closed it again. Maybe she didn't think I could handle it. Maybe she thought it would be too much for me, to see all those messed up ex-soldiers. "You do have a volunteer program," I went on, "don't you?"

"Yes, we do," she said shortly. "I'm sorry. I think I misunderstood you for a moment. Y-You want to volunteer? Here?"

Following that I almost expected her to say, _Why not a nice little animal shelter, instead?, _but she didn't. I was glad, too, because maybe that meant she was going to take me seriously.

"I've been thinking about it," I told her. "I thought it would be a nice thing to do."

She sighed heavily. "Look, you sound very intelligent, young lady, but I don't think you'd want to – "

"My brother's in Vietnam," I said. "I mean – not yet. But he's going. My best friend is, too. I want to do this."

She looked at me for a moment, regarding me carefully, and then shuffled her papers nervously. When she met my eyes again, she said, "What's your name?"

"Eleanor."

"Eleanor," she repeated, as if it were as foreign and alien to her as Vietnam still was to America. "My name's Maureen. My husband is over there, too. He's only been there for about two months now. We have a baby coming ..."

I hadn't seen it before, but now I realized that she was pregnant. "Oh," I said, surprised. "Congratulations. Do you know what it is?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?"

"Oh, I'm ... No, I don't. Frank wants a boy, though." She smiled softly, but it didn't last long, and then she looked up at me sadly. "I just hope he makes it through. Both of us grew up military ... he wanted to get an honorable discharge after we got married, and I didn't want to live on the base anymore, so we bought a house here ... but he had already been promoted to captain and then he got orders for Vietnam. He's a company commander there."

Maureen had an interesting story, and background. Walking in here I never would have expected it, and I hadn't seen the fear or the worry in her eyes that was so blatant now. "So why are you here?" I wondered. "I mean ... if your husband is there, why do you want a job here?"

She thought for a moment. "I-I guess for the same reason you do. At least if something happens to Frank, and they send him here ... I'll be here, too."

That was the same way I'd felt about Soda and Steve. I gave her a timid smile, and said, "I'm sure your husband will be fine."

She returned my gesture with a smile of her own, and thanked me. "Now," she continued. "You wanted to know about volunteering?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I do."

She stood and picked up her reading glasses, and came around to the front of the desk. "Come with me."

She didn't look very pregnant, and really only looked different from the side, so I figured she could only be about five months along, but it still made me smile nonetheless. It was new life.

I followed her down the hall to another, slightly larger office where about five or six military nurses in crisp white dresses and hats sat at desks and worked diligently on paperwork. I stood in the doorway and waited patiently while Maureen walked over to the nearest desk and asked a woman she called Lieutenant Ferguson if she could speak with her for a moment. The lieutenant woman nodded, and pushed her paperwork aside, and after a minute or two she motioned me over.

"How old are you?" she asked me. She seemed a lot more uptight than Maureen, and already I wasn't sure if I liked her.

"I'm turning sixteen next month," I replied. "On the tenth."

"So you're fifteen."

"Yes," I said bluntly. But I wouldn't be for long.

"And you have a brother in Vietnam?"

I shook my head. "Not yet."

"What do you mean, 'not yet'?"

"He and my best friend got drafted," I explained. "They're at boot camp right now."

She merely nodded once and sifted through a different stack of papers belligerently before pulling one out that suited her. "All right, you wanna volunteer here, you gotta fill out this form first. You need your parents to sign it, too."

At the mention of my parents I felt my heart sink to the pit of my stomach. "Um ..." I tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear and swallowed against the lump in my throat. "M-My parents died last year ... I live with my brothers ..."

Maureen's hand flew to her heart and she gasped softly, and Lieutenant Ferguson's stern expression looked almost sort of sad now. "Oh, dear, I'm ... I'm so sorry."

I knew she was just saying that, because she probably hadn't experienced the losses and the heartbreak that I had, but I simply nodded as a means of thanking her for her sympathy. "My older brother could sign it," I said without thinking. Darry wouldn't sign it. In fact he'd probably kill me for coming down here in the first place.

"You have to fill it out first, dear," Lieutenant Ferguson said.

"I know. I'll do that."

"Would you like to take it with you?"

"Yeah. Thank you."

She handed me the form and Maureen walked me to the front of the hospital. "You know," she said, "except for the Red Cross and the USO, most volunteers here only come around on the holidays, and then they never come back."

So I had been right. They _didn't _get many volunteers. Or at least judging by the tone of her voice, it didn't seem that way.

"I'm sorry," I said. "You probably need them more than those other organizations."

"The nurses around here do a pretty good job, but you're right." She bit her lip and looked thoughtful before smiling gratefully. "You look like you'd be pretty dedicated, though. I mean, it's just volunteering. You don't get paid and you can basically come whenever you want. Unless they" – she motioned in the direction of the office down the hall – "want you to come on certain days."

"I'm supposed to be getting a job two days out of the week this month," I explained. "But I'm sure it'll work out somehow."

It would work out perfect, actually, if Darry agreed to letting me do this at all. I wished he would realize how important it was to me.

"That's good," Maureen said. We came to the lobby's entrance and she placed a friendly hand on my shoulder. "It was very nice to meet you, Eleanor. I hope to see you around here sometime. And I'm very sorry about your parents. That must be horrible for you and your brothers."

I nodded. "It has been. We're getting by, though. Slowly but surely." I started for the door and waved. "Good luck with your baby, and your husband."

"Thank you," she replied, and waved back. "See you around."

On the way home I stopped and grabbed a bite to eat, but then realized what side of town I was on when I received some nasty looks from a group of Socs, and decided just to go on home, because not only was it getting late, but I didn't want to stick around long enough to find out what would happen when it dawned on them that I was by myself, and on their turf to boot. Though it wasn't nearly as energized as it had been, tension and hate still lingered between our side and theirs, and while I tried not to discriminate, it was just so easy to feel everything less than civil towards them because of their cold-blooded lack of feeling and mean-spiritedness. Maybe some of them were nice, but most of them weren't.

It was late in the afternoon, but because it was summer now it stayed lighter longer, which I was grateful for; I didn't want to walk home, alone, in the dark. Even that had become so unpredictable nowadays.

I'd walked about four blocks, taking an occasional yet refreshing sip of the lemonade that I'd bought, and then I literally ran smack into Two-Bit, who was walking in the opposite direction.

"Whoa, Eleanor …" he said, startled. "What are ya doin' all the way over here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," I replied.

"Well, I don't think ya came all the way to this side of town just for that." He pointed to my lemonade, half-empty now.

"I didn't," I said. "I was mailing a letter too." Knowing that I was lying or half-lying, he stared at me for a long time until I finally caved. "Okay, fine," I sighed. "I mailed a letter and then I walked over to the VA hospital to ask about their volunteer program. There. You happy?"

He just smirked and started walking back the way he came. I caught up and fell into step beside him. "Darry's not gonna like that, y'know," he said.

"I know. That's why I'm not telling him. And if you wanna live to see tomorrow, neither are you."

"That's a threat, isn't it?"

"You could say that." I took a generous sip of my lemonade and then realized I hadn't eaten since the morning, and it felt like my stomach was all shriveled up inside of me. "I'm sorry," I went on. "It's just … volunteering there is really important to me. They gave me this form and everything."

"What are ya gonna do with it?"

I sighed. "I don't know. If I can't volunteer there then I don't have much use for it. I might as well just burn it, or something."

"Eleanor, are you holdin' up okay?"

"I-I guess I'm just confused about a lot of things right now, that's all. It's not anybody's fault."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah," I said. "I think it's just the world in general. You ever get that feeling where ... I don't know, you just wanna change things, or make things better? I want to do that, but I don't know how. That's why I thought volunteering would be a good idea. I mean, it's a start, you know?"

"Sure," Two-Bit agreed, and then laughed. "Why don't ya just do it in secret?"

"Yeah, but what excuse would I make up for being gone all day? 'Oh, gee, I'm sorry I didn't tell anybody sooner, but I have a secret daytime job as a drug dealer'?"

"No, you don't need an excuse. Least not one like _that. _Just say you're takin' a walk and leave."

"That'd be a pretty damn long walk, if you ask me," I muttered. "God knows I was gone long enough today."

"Yeah, well, I ain't the one that wants to change the world. That's you. And anyway, it was just a suggestion."

I shrugged. "I know. Look, we're almost to my house."

"Yeah. You goin' in?"

"I don't got anything else to do," I answered.

"Oh, right, I forgot. Your partners in crime ain't here."

I forced a laugh I didn't feel and kicked at a rock lying on the sidewalk. It went sailing and landed in the middle of the street, where it seemed to blend with the pavement. "Yeah, I noticed that."

"Look, I'll see you guys later, all right?"

"You're not gonna stick around?"

"Nah," he said. "I got better things to do."

I smiled. "Yeah, like what? Drink a little?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Somethin' like that. See ya."

"Have a good night," I laughed. "Thanks for walking with me."

"Yeah. Same to you."

The sun was nearly gone now, sunken low behind the horizon and rising on the opposite side of the world, but it left a vivid array of colors in its wake, and the silhouettes of the trees looked smoky and hazy there against the darkening canvas that was the sky. It seemed like when you watched it just for that one moment, everything was okay. The world wasn't spinning out of control. There was no war or hatred. A split second of peace.

I went inside after a minute or two though, because I wasn't going to allow myself to become lost within it. That's what happened to a lot of people these days, because it wasn't reality and when reality didn't exist it was so easy to lose sight of oneself.

"I'm home," I called to anyone who was listening, which really was only Darry and Ponyboy now. Gosh, it was so goddamn _quiet. _I just couldn't seem to get over that.

"Hi, Eleanor," Ponyboy said from the couch. I jumped, as I hadn't seen him there. He was flipping through some magazine.

"Oh," I said. "Hi."

"You were gone a long time."

"Yeah, I know."

"Well, where were you? You weren't just mailing that letter. You were gone too long for that."

Hadn't I already been over this once today? "I'll explain later, all right? Where's Darry?"

"In the kitchen making dinner. I don't know what we're having, though."

"Oh. Okay. Well, do you mind if I turn on the TV? I think _Bewitched _is on." He gave me a funny look as I flipped on the television switch. "What? I always watch it."

"I thought you just watched the news."

I waved my hand to dismiss the subject. "The news is too depressing. You see the same thing every day, anyway. Nothing's changed, you know?" He nodded solemnly. "Sometimes that stuff just needs to go away for a while. So they invented sitcoms."

"Eleanor, you're doing it again."

"Doing what again?"

"Talking," he said. "The nonstop talking you always do when you got a lot on your mind."

"I don't have a lot on my mind," I lied. "I was just telling you why they invented sitcoms."

He was about to reply to that when Darry appeared from the kitchen. "Oh," he said to me, "I thought I heard your voice. Ponyboy said you were gone a while. What'd you do all day?"

"I took a walk to mail a letter," I explained, "and then I stopped at the record store for a couple hours."

"You been spendin' a lotta time there lately, Eleanor," he said. "Should I be worried about you?"

I shook my head. "No. It's relaxing there, is all."

I knew he wasn't exactly buying that, but he just nodded and went back into the kitchen, and Ponyboy turned to me with a look of sheer disbelief on his face. "You stopped at the record store?"

I grinned. "Good lies are all in the details."

Later that night though after we had eaten dinner and everything, and after I had decided I was too tired to stay up any longer, I laid awake in my bed for a long time and stared up at the ceiling. It was funny – if you stared at it long enough, not thinking about anything else, you could almost start to see shapes form and twist around one another before finally collapsing in on themselves and disappearing. I had to look away more than once, though, because it would begin to numb my eyes.

Ponyboy came in about a half hour after I did, and for the longest time I thought sure he'd fallen asleep, until I heard him ask me where I had really gone today.

"You said yourself that you lied," he pointed out.

I sighed and turned over to face the window. I had opened it a crack to let some air in, and I could hear the crickets chirping outside. Moisture had begun to form on the glass and I reached out with my hand and wrote _Eleanor Elaine _inside of it with my index finger. It came out in a seven-year-old's interpretation of cursive.

"Fine," I said. "If you really wanna know, I went to the VA hospital."

"Why? Darry said he didn't want you to volunteer there."

"I wasn't _volunteering, _per se," I explained. "I was simply _asking _them about the volunteer program. But you can't tell Darry I went there, okay?"

"Eleanor, what kinda brother do ya think I am?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer for that. I knew he wouldn't tell. "What'd they tell you about it?"

"Well, they asked me how old I was, that kinda stuff, and they gave me this volunteer form to fill out, but the only problem with that is that you need a parent or guardian signature for it."

I didn't mention anything about Maureen or Lieutenant Ferguson yet.

"Why don't you just tell Darry why it's so important? Then maybe he'll let ya do it."

"Maybe," I sighed, and snuggled deeper beneath the sheets. My bed lurched slightly and I recognized Inka's familiar meow of arrival that she always made when she jumped up there with me. I smiled down at her and patted the spot next to me, and she curled up underneath my shoulder and, purring low, fell asleep almost instantly.

My mind was so jumbled up with everything, though, that it took me at least another hour.

Ever since those damned draft notices came, I hadn't had one peaceful sleep yet. I think I'd forgotten what that kinda sleep felt like, and I wasn't sure I'd ever remember.

xxx

**A/N: **Okay, I've seen in different places that VA either stands for Veterans Administrations or Veterans Affairs. I used Veterans Administrations because I don't see Veterans Affairs very often, but if anybody knows for a fact which one it is, could you please enlighten me? I'd like to actually get that correct. :)

Reviews are appreciated! Chapter Fifteen soon.


	15. Fifteen

**A/N: **Thanks again for all of the reviews. Sorry if I ever slag off in review replies—it happens, more often than not, but I'm working on it. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders, _"Twentieth Century Fox," written and performed by The Doors, or "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)," written by John Phillips and performed by Scott McKenzie.

---

**Chapter Fifteen: **

" … _well, she's fashionably lean, and she's fashionably late / she'll never rank a scene, she'll never break a date … "_

In August, when Soda and Steve came home on leave for two weeks, I didn't laugh at them as Steve had predicted I would. In fact, I think I hugged them both for a good minute or two each, not only because I had missed them, but because this really did mark the last time that I would see them for a while. Maybe forever. I hated thinking about that, but because it was such a reality, there was no way around it. No way to avoid it.

On the flip side, however, I must say they looked really sharp in their Army uniforms. I could hardly associate them with the word 'greaser' anymore, even, because they sure didn't look it. Even so, though, you could easily see that they were uncomfortable and were anxious to get back into regular clothes for a while. I didn't think it looked right, either. But I still thought they looked pretty handsome.

Something about them had changed, though. It wasn't anything big – in fact, it was really quite subtle; you almost didn't notice it – but nonetheless it was there. Their eyes were different, like they'd seen the war already without really seeing it. Like the two or so odd months they'd been at Fort Sam Houston now were more than they could handle. Well, I thought, frustrated, if they can't handle _that, _how the hell are they gonna manage Vietnam?

Or maybe that hardened exhaustion was just their way of trying to act like soldiers, toughened up soldiers who'd gone through hell and lived to tell about it.

Living where we lived could toughen a person up quite a bit, and rightfully so, but perhaps boot camp was simply there to finish the job. At least, that's the impression that I was under. Things were going to be different fast, though. Even after the war ended, none of us were going to be exactly the same as we were now.

During dinner that night Soda and Steve told us all about Fort Sam Houston and what it was like there, except for Soda, who was quieter than normal and didn't share much except to say that they'd both been promoted to PFC now, and about how for the past two weeks he'd been stuck listening to Steve complain about how he wanted to reach sergeant status eventually. It seemed odd to me, though, that he wasn't more animated about it the way Steve was. I wondered if maybe he'd had a bad experience there, but he didn't seem to want to talk about it, so I didn't ask him.

For when they were finished, I had some news of my own.

"I got a job, finally," I announced. Perplexed glances were passed around before all met my own relatively focused expression—I think they wondered what had taken me so long.

"You did?" said Darry, a bit taken aback. I think he might have forgotten about it until now.

"A job," I told him. "I work at the hair salon now. I'm a shampoo girl, s – "

"A shampoo girl?" Steve laughed. "You serious?"

"Let her talk. I wanna see what she's on about."

"Didn't ever wanna take over _my _job?" Soda wondered.

"Hair salon pays better," I explained. "Besides, at least there I'm _doing _something."

Soda raised his eyebrows curiously and Steve leaned closer to him, trying to make it so I couldn't hear him but I did anyway. "Guess she told you."

"It isn't a competition, Steve," I countered dryly.

"Why'd you take that job then?" Ponyboy asked me.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I was looking for something fun, maybe. I mean" – I glanced over at Soda – "no offense, but it looked boring working at the gas station, I don't know how many girls even realistically work at those, and whenever I visited you guys, the air conditioner always broke. Besides, I don't know the first thing about cars."

"You can say that again," muttered Steve, and I threw him a dirty look across the table.

"Well," Darry prompted, sounding flustered. I don't know what about, though. I mean – it paid better. And anyway, I wanted to help out with the income, so I can't imagine he would have had anything real major to complain about. "You sure you'll be able to handle that?"

"Yeah." I looked down at my plate and pushed my food around with my fork. "Why not?"

"I wondered," he went on. "I mean, if you're gonna start volunteerin' at the VA, too, I wouldn't want all of that to get in the way."

My head shot up like a rocket. In fact, I think everybody's did, because nobody in a million years would have expected that. "Really? You're letting me volunteer there?"

"I thought about it awhile." He nodded. "Might be good for you."

"Oh, thank you!" I jumped up from my chair, and in my flurry I nearly knocked it to the floor. "Let me run and get that form – "

He grabbed hold of my arm before I could take a step further. "Why don't ya finish eating first, huh?"

I smiled happily. "Yes. Of course."

Later on I sat out on the porch with Soda and Steve and we talked as we always did. The sun had gone down and the stars were out, and the night air was humid, but there was almost this distinct chill in the breeze, as if there to tell us summer wasn't going to last much longer. Or something wasn't going to last much longer. Or maybe it was just _there, _and I was reading into things too much as I so often did. I thought about that for a long time, trying to make up my mind. After a while I gave up, because I couldn't figure it out anyway.

Instead I studied them for a moment or two, my best friends, and thought about what the next year or so would be like without them. At least I wouldn't be too bored. But nonetheless, I'd be worrying.

"You guys look so different," I mused.

"Yeah," Steve groaned. "Looks tuff, don't it? I thought sure you'd laugh."

I smiled and shook my head. "I guess it's not really funny. More like pitiful, in a weird sort of way."

"I hate it, too," Soda said with a scowl. "Think it'll grow back?"

"Eventually, sure."

"That's too long for me," Steve said.

"You'll get used to it," I assured them. "In fact soon you probably won't even notice anymore."

"Easy for you to say," Soda argued. "You ain't the one in the Army. And you got all your hair. We got nothin'. Oh, yeah," he went on, as if remembering something, "sorry we missed your sweet sixteen."

I waved my hand dismissively. That didn't matter anymore. "It's fine."

"No, it ain't. We shoulda been there."

"Well, gee, then in that case I guess you _could _have gone AWOL." I shook my head. "It's no sweat, really. You didn't miss anything. I'm sorry that my becoming one year older makes you feel guilty."

"Just drop it, man," Steve said. "She ain't mad at us."

I smiled at both of them. "I really missed you guys, like ... I can't even tell you. I was so bored!"

"Yeah?" Steve regarded me carefully. "What are ya gonna do when we leave again?" Trust him to bring up something like that.

"That's not happening for two whole weeks," I reminded him. "I don't want to talk about it."

He and Soda exchanged peeved glances. "'Scuse me for livin'," he muttered, and lit up a cigarette.

"I imagine I'll be pretty busy, though, if that answers your question," I said. "You know, working and volunteering and writing letters. And school's starting up again soon, too, so I reckon that'll take up a lot of my time."

"Guess it's a good thing we ain't gonna be around then, eh, Steve? She wouldn't have any time for us."

"I would so," I argued. "Half the things on that list I wouldn't even be doing if you guys hadn't been drafted."

Soda looked hopeful. "Think there's still a chance we can go on up to Canada?"

I shook my head. "I doubt it. They know your names now. The Army, I mean."

Steve made a face at that and took a generous drag off his cigarette, and then he turned on the radio. "Light My Fire" was playing, and he turned it up.

"You like this song, El?" he wondered. The cigarette had obviously had the desired effect; he'd loosened up some since we came out here. "I like this song."

"It's okay," I admitted. "But I'm still partial to folk and the like. You have any more of those?"

"Any more of what?"

"Cigarettes," I said.

He nodded and handed me one without hesitation, but Soda looked wary. "El, when did you start smokin'? You almost never smoke."

"Things have been kinda stressful lately, that's all," I explained defensively. "I don't do it religiously or anything, though, if that's what you're worried about. I need a light."

He still looked displeased and cautious, but didn't say anything more because he knew it'd sound hypocritical, as we both knew that he did the same thing when things got to be too much for him. "Oh, hell," he said at last, giving up. "Let me have one, too. May as well join in on the smoking orgy."

I laughed at his odd phrasing, beginning to feel better about things already. I just hoped that feeling would last.

I don't know how long we were out there – at least another hour. We kept the radio on most of the time, allowing it to fill the silence when there seemed to be nothing to say. A nice little song came on about going to San Francisco with flowers in your hair, and I turned it up, but then Soda reached over and turned it back down because it was obviously not his type of music, nor Steve's judging by the bored expression on his face, but I didn't care. It was a nice song with a pretty melody and I liked it. When I turned it back up again, both of them just decided to ignore it.

_There's a whole generation, _the man sang, _with a new explanation. _

Yeah. That was for sure.

"Y'know," Soda said after a moment, looking thoughtful, "I don't know why I was thinking about this, but I was. Remember last year, El, when you had to be my date 'cause Sandy was sick?"

Steve laughed because he had been there too and I just shook my head. "Yes, I remember that."

It had been an interesting night, an interesting sort of day altogether, really. It was the middle of summer, I believe – a couple of months after my parents' deaths, and my brothers and I were all in the last stages of grief. If I remember correctly, I was finally beginning to accept it then. I had never denied the fact that they were not coming back – I had known that all along – but actually accepting it and letting them go had been the most difficult part.

I think I had just turned fifteen about a week or so before.

It was a Friday, and normally that would have been our weekly movie night, but my brother and Steve decided to back out so that they could take their girls out instead. That was fine by me, but then later on Soda got all bent out of shape because Sandy had called and said she couldn't go; she was sick. He didn't talk to her because he was at work and I had answered the phone, but she'd sounded miserable – like she had the flu, or something.

"Wasn't she just here the other day?" I pointed out when I told him. "She was fine then."

"Yeah," he grumbled. "She's been actin' strange lately."

"Maybe she's stressed out," I offered.

"Maybe," he echoed thoughtfully. "Then again maybe not. Either way, she ain't goin', so it'll just be me, Steve, and Evie."

Following him into the bathroom where he stood at the mirror to comb his hair, I sat down on the toilet and turned on the radio and watched for a moment. "Always Something there to Remind Me," I think it was called, was playing. I made a face. "Three's not a date."

He shrugged, looking rueful. "You're tellin' me."

"Where are you guys going, anyway? Movies?"

"Nah. Bowling."

"Really?" I said. "That sounds like fun. I'll miss going to the movies with you, though."

He didn't answer for a moment, just stood there as if deep in thought. "Hey," he said suddenly, "that's it!"

"What's it?" I wondered, and got up to follow him again as he walked briskly down the hall towards our room. "What's it?" I repeated, not sure if he'd heard or if he was just being silly.

But then he stopped and turned to face me. "Eleanor," he said, "how would you like to be my date tonight?"

I hesitated. "To be your _what?" _

"My date. Y'know, since Sandy can't go."

"Soda, in case you haven't noticed, I'm your sister."

He shrugged nonchalantly. "So? Nobody's gonna know that."

"I don't know," I said cautiously. "You think Steve'll mind? I mean, since Evie'll be there and all?"

"Doubt it. C'mon, El, what's the big deal? It'll be fun."

"Fine," I said resignedly. I would definitely feel like I was interfering, and despite what Soda had said I knew Steve wouldn't be too happy about it, even though we were friends, but I had nothing better to do. "If you insist."

"Great," he said with a grin, and started back towards the bathroom to finish getting ready. "It'll be fun," he promised again, "I'm tellin' ya."

I smiled. "Let me win, and that will become fact."

"Threatening me, El?"

"Bribing," I corrected. "Besides, you guys never let me win at anything. It bothers me."

"Maybe you're just not good at stuff," he countered. "Maybe we're better at stuff than you are, 'cause you're a girl."

I frowned. "Sodapop Curtis, that is sexist, and it is the farthest thing from the truth I have ever heard. I _am_ good at stuff, and you know it."

He gave me an apologetic smile. "Maybe I was just kiddin'."

We waited around for Steve to show up with Evie for about a half hour, and when he did, like I had predicted, he looked none too happy that I was coming along. Sure, yeah, we were best friends and all, but he knew that I didn't like interfering with their love lives and I hadn't planned on starting now. I had to explain to him that Soda had kinda roped me into it on account of Sandy not being able to go, to which he said he didn't mind as long as it didn't become a regular thing.

It wasn't going to. I could vouch for that.

That wasn't the only reason, though. I also didn't like being around Evie, and I usually tried to avoid her when I could help it. I wasn't jealous of her – that wasn't why, because in the past I'd gotten along pretty well with most of their girlfriends, as the majority of them were relatively tolerable, I suppose – but there was just something about her in particular that I didn't like. She could be rude and conceited at times, and her cold yet obnoxious and giggly attitude had really begun to get on my nerves.

I wasn't even really sure I understood what Steve saw in her, or how he could stand her. Maybe it was looks, because while her personality was not miraculously pleasant, she was awfully pretty, and more often than not pretty girls were favored over respectable intelligent ones, and even I knew that girls who possessed both those qualities were rare.

And it didn't take a rocket scientist to know that I was not her favorite person in the world, either, which I'm guessing was partly due to the fact that I was friends with Steve, which I'm sure bothered her, and partly because she and I were, ninety-nine percent of the time, on completely different maturity levels.

So we went bowling, as planned, and for the most part it was a rather enjoyable evening. Except for the times when it was their turn, Steve and Evie spent most of their time absorbed in their phony excuse for romance, while Soda and I got very competitive over our game, and eventually he got bored of letting me win. I didn't mind, because by that time it was all-out war, and I was having a good time beating him fairly. Eventually though I decided I was thirsty enough, and took a break for a minute to go and get something to drink.

"Anybody want anything while I'm gone?" I asked before I wandered off.

"Get me a Coke," Steve said absently, too focused on watching Evie take her turn to really pay any attention to much else. "Get Evie one, too."

She had been about to roll the bowling ball down the lane before she heard her name, and turned around. "Get me what?" she demanded impatiently.

"A Coke," Steve told her. "Eleanor's gonna get you a Coke."

"Oh," she replied shortly, and turned back around, flipping her long blonde hair over her shoulder in the process.

I rolled my eyes. "Soda, you want anything?"

"Yeah," he said. "But I'll come with ya."

"What for? I'm a big girl; I can go by myself."

"I'm your date, ain't I?" he reminded me sardonically. "Can't let ya start goin' off on your own like you're a single woman."

"Soda," I grumbled tiredly, but didn't protest, and he followed me over to the concession area and we stood in line for about five minutes – Friday nights were fairly busy here. When we did get the drinks, though, I shoved the ones I was carrying into his arms and informed him that I had to stop off at the little girl's room.

"El, you think I can carry all this back by myself?"

"Oh, come on," I teased. "You can handle it. You're a man, ain't ya?"

"Then you're just a crazy girl, sis," he retorted playfully, so I knew he didn't really mind, and then he walked off in the opposite direction, juggling our four drinks, and I made my way down to the bathroom.

I never liked public bathrooms much. I tried to stay away from them when I could. I always got the feeling that they weren't cleaned as often as they should be, as so many people used them throughout the day. Maybe that was true, but regardless, I didn't like them.

I guess I couldn't help it this time, though.

When I was finished I stood before the mirror to freshen up a bit, and couldn't help noticing some of the things that were written on the wall around it, each in different handwriting and a different colored marker.

_Cathy Romano is a slut!_

_Patricia Mike, 2gether 4ever. _That one had a heart drawn around it.

_Theresa Lamont was here. _Followed by her phone number. Or somebody's phone number. I shook my head. Who would write their phone number for the world to see?

"Having fun, Eleanor?"

I turned to find the voice's owner. It was Evie, standing at the mirror beside me, examining her own features petulantly, like she wasn't satisfied with what God had given her. I sure would be, if I were her; she was gorgeous.

"Oh," I said. "I didn't see you."

I hadn't even known she was in here.

She ignored me purposely and struggled to locate her mascara, and when she found it at last she caked a generous amount on her eyelashes. I scowled. That girl had more makeup on her face than Lily Munster.

"Look," she said at last, capping her mascara and returning it to her purse, "I don't know why you came tonight, but stay away from my boyfriend. Okay?"

"Excuse me?"

She rinsed her hands off in the sink and shook them dry, and then walked around me to get to the paper towel dispenser. "You heard me."

Yeah, I'd heard her all right. "Are you serious? What kind of person do you think I am? Steve's my best friend."

"Exactly," she retorted darkly.

"Well, I'm sorry if that bothers you, but I think you're making a big deal out of nothing."

"I don't," she countered. "Wouldn't you feel, oh, I don't know, just a little bit unsure if your boyfriend was friends with other girls?"

"I've known him all my life," I offered. "It's not like that. At all. And it never will be. So cool it."

"Yeah. Well, just stay away, okay?"

Had she even heard a word I'd just said? Was she so blind as to think that Steve and I had those kinds of feelings for each other? I felt like slapping her. If I hadn't restrained myself just then I think I would have, too.

"I don't really see how you care, anyway," I said venomously. "I know you cheat on him."

She lit up a cigarette nonchalantly, and leaned against the wall, right over the names I had been reading on there before. Ironically, her slim figure covered up _Cathy Romano is a _and so all you could see was _slut._ "You wouldn't know that."

"No, but I do." It was such a double standard. She was telling me to stay away from my best friend but yet she had the nerve to go off two-timing him with God knows how many others.

"You don't know me," she growled. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know you well enough to say this, Evie: you're kind of a bitch. And why Steve even likes you in the first place, I will never know."

And then I walked out. I left her standing there in a swirl of cigarette smoke and superficiality. Somebody that low wasn't even worth my time. Throughout the remainder of the night she would throw me contemptuous looks, especially if I was talking to Steve, but never another word was spoken. And I was glad.

During the ride home all she and Steve did was bicker, and Soda kept looking over at me ruefully, like he thought I was the reason. Maybe I was. Maybe she'd told him what I'd said about her and he'd agreed with me, though it could have been anything. But I knew _something _was wrong because when he dropped her off he didn't even kiss her goodnight. He said he'd call her tomorrow, to which she replied with a curt, "Whatever," and then slammed the door so hard that the entire car shook.

When I was sure she was out of earshot, I said, "Trouble in paradise, Steve?"

"I don't wanna talk about it, Eleanor," he grumbled, and peeled out of the driveway, not even waiting to make sure she got in safely.

Soda glanced over at me and whispered, "You think they called it quits?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I hope so. He can do so much better."

He snickered and propped his feet up on the back of the passenger's seat. "Yeah. Ain't that the truth."

That really had been an interesting night, to say the least. I had been glad to come home, just to know that it was over. Darry had said I looked exhausted, and I said I was, and went straight to bed. At that moment there had been nothing more comforting than curling up under the covers and going to sleep, my legs transformed into a makeshift bed for Inka, as they so often were.

When I returned to the present, I sat back and breathed in the warm night air. "How is Evie these days, Steve?" I wondered. "You don't talk about her much."

"Wouldn't know. I've only been here six hours," he replied.

"I mean before you guys left," I corrected myself. "You didn't really talk about her then, either."

"Before we left," he explained, "I broke it off with her."

"You did?" Soda and I said in unison, both of us surprised to hear this.

"Yeah. Told her it wasn't gonna work out. The long distance thing, I mean. She don't write much, anyway. And if somethin' happened to me over there …" He shook his head. "Sorry, Eleanor. I know you don't like talkin' about that."

"It's fine," I said. It wasn't fine, of course, but it was reality, and I'd rather just face reality than argue with him about it. "How'd she take it?"

"She was a little upset. But I think she understood." He forced a laugh and lit up another cigarette. "Least I hope she did. What about you?" he went on. "How's your love life?"

I laughed feebly. "Nonexistent."

"Aw, don't worry about it," Soda said with a grin. "You'll find someone."

"Who said I was worrying? The only thing I'm gonna be worrying about is you two." I stood up and glanced through the window to the clock in the kitchen, and the time only made me realize that I was tired, and I started for the door.

"Where ya goin', sis?" Soda wondered.

"I'm gonna hit the sack," I told him. "See you guys in the morning."

I wandered into the kitchen and found Inka munching on what was left of her dinner. She looked content, and her collar clinked against the glass bowl repeatedly. I smiled down at her.

"C'mon, Inkie," I said, and bent to pick her up. She meowed loudly in protest. "Time for sleepy."

"Goin' to bed, Eleanor?" Darry wondered when I passed by the living room. He was reading the paper and Ponyboy was watching TV.

"Yeah," I said. "See ya in the mornin'."

He nodded and went back to his paper, and Ponyboy said, "G'night, Eleanor."

"Night," I replied, and continued on to my room. Once there I set Inka down on the ground and closed the door, and she sniffed around for a minute before jumping up onto the desk chair and watched as I shut the blinds and changed into my pajamas. I crawled into bed but waited for a moment, as I usually didn't feel completely satisfied and comfortable until I felt Inka jump up there with me and announce herself. When she did, I laughed at her and turned over onto my side, and closed my eyes.

I fell asleep quicker than ever that night.

xxx

**PFC: **Private First Class; one rank above Private E-2 (the lowest noncommissioned rank in the Army), but below corporal or specialist fourth class  
**AWOL: **Attention Without Leave; or being away from military duties without permission, but without the intention of deserting

**A/N: **I know that Evie has human qualities, and as fascinated as I am by her, this really is how I perceive her. Please don't jump down my throat and accuse me of 'demonizing' her—considering this is just the way I see her, I don't believe that I did. The other two songs that I included in this chapter were "Light My Fire" by The Doors, and "Always Something there to Remind Me" by Sandie Shaw.

Reviews are appreciated! Merry Christmas. :)


	16. Sixteen

**A/N: **I hope everybody had a terrific Christmas. I sure did—I'm currently posting this on my new laptop. ;)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Slip Kid," written by Pete Townshend and performed by The Who.

---

**Chapter Sixteen:**

" … _I've got my clipboard, textbooks, lead me to the station, yeah I'm off to the civil war / I've got my kit bag, my heavy boots, I'm runnin' in the rain, gonna run 'til my feet are raw … "_

"C'mon, now, missy – make a selection. I haven't got all day, y'know."

The auburn-haired woman with the paisley scarf around her head glared at me impatiently while I tried to decide, did I want my palm read or the tarot cards?

I went with the cards.

She nodded and pushed her crystal ball aside, and shuffled the cards with the Renaissance era-like pictures on them. Her long fingernails made clicking sounds against them. I could smell the incense burning all over the room, could hear the sitar music playing drearily in the background. It was enough to make me feel like I was on an acid trip.

"You sure about this, kid?" she asked me, still busy with the cards. Her eyes were cloudy, unreadable, and her mouth was set in a determined line.

"I'm sure," I replied.

She sighed, like she'd been doing this for years and was bored of it, and then set the cards out one by one in front of her. In front of me. I watched but didn't pay much attention until I saw the expression on her face change. She looked disturbed and nervous.

"What is it?" I demanded. "What do they say?"

She didn't answer, just continued to stare down at the cards until I followed suit. My breath caught in my throat and I felt something like needles stinging me all over.

They all had something to do with war. And death.

I woke with a start, breathing raggedly. My palms were sweaty and so was my face. Momentarily, I thought back to the dream and the expression in the woman's eyes. It was only a dream, Eleanor, that's all, I told myself. My heart raced and my head wouldn't believe it. There had been something so disturbing and scary about it.

I was determined to forget about it. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and walked down to the bathroom, studying my reflection in the mirror for a long time. My eyes were red, as if I'd been crying, and my skin was a pale, almost greenish color. My ebony-dark hair fell in tangled waves to my elbows. I needed something to drink; then my normal color would come back.

I went out into the kitchen for a glass of milk and looked at the clock. It was twelve thirty in the afternoon. That was the longest I'd slept all week.

The front door opened and then slammed shut again and I heard Darry and Ponyboy conversing in low voices. Maybe they thought I was still in bed.

"Hi!" I called brightly. "Where were you guys? I – "

Darry came into the kitchen, looking exhausted, and Ponyboy walked right past me. Didn't say anything, just kept on going until he came to our room and closed the door.

"What's up with him?" I wondered. "You two have a little disagreement? Where's Soda?"

"Eleanor, don't you remember?" he said suddenly. I made a face.

"Huh? Remember what?"

"We didn't wanna wake you up," he went on, and then I did remember. Yesterday had been the last day. Soda and Steve were leaving again today, _had _left again today. It had come up so fast, I didn't even realize it. We'd tried to make the best of those two weeks they were on leave. And now they were gone, gone to Vietnam and the ugly war that had so violently erupted within it.

Slowly, I sank down into the chair across from Darry, my face I'm sure going ashen again. "But I … I never got to say goodbye," I said. My voice was cracking. I thought I might cry. "You could have woken me up."

"I guess I should have put that in other words. _They _didn't wanna wake you up. They didn't wanna make it any harder for you."

"This doesn't make it any easier," I countered.

"I know. But it ain't gonna change it, all right? Soda said he'd write you when they got there."

"How long is it gonna take them to get there, do you think?"

Darry shrugged. "Don't know for sure. Guess they're leaving from some Air Force base in Texas, stopping in California, and then Wake Island and Japan, and then finally Vietnam. That's what their orders said."

"God, talk about jet lag," I offered, trying to make light of the situation as best I could. "I wish I could have said goodbye, but … I don't know. Maybe it was better this way. I don't even know if I could stand the idea of another goodbye."

"Eleanor … it's gonna be okay, all right? Try not to worry so much."

"I can't help it. This isn't easy for me. What if yesterday was the last time I'll ever see them?"

"That's the part that's not makin' it easy for you," he explained. "You gotta stop thinkin' like that all the time. It's only gonna make it worse."

"You sound like a shrink," I said with a half-hearted laugh. "But I guess you're right."

And I don't know, maybe he was. I did tend to worry more than was probably good for me, and now with something like this happening, the reality of it all, I wasn't sure how stable my emotions would be for the next year.

I gave myself a few days for it to really sink in. Sometimes things like that hit me when I least expected it, like when my parents died, and I knew how bad it would be if that happened. I didn't want to make a fool out of myself somehow and I tried to stick close to home until I was sure I was okay.

It never did hit me like I thought it would, though. I had wondered which would be first – the fact that I was, metaphorically speaking, "alone," or the realization that I may never see one or both of them again. The latter was much more difficult for me to accept but for some reason that seemed to be the only affect that it had on me. It was weird. I hadn't acted the way I did last time and I couldn't figure out why, because this was worse.

I gave myself a week and a half, with school starting too, and then I began work at the hair salon. It only took me one day of just being there and getting to know my job to figure out that I was really going to like it. It was almost kind of a release, or an alternative. A way to detach myself from everything. Since I had just started there, my only requirement was shampooing and conditioning, really – no fancy cutting or coloring yet. I hadn't had the experience.

The majority of customers were women, and though my hands looked like prunes by the end of the day, it was interesting listening to them gossip, and I learned quite a few things about quite a few people. I think most of them were Socy women, if you could even put adults under labels like that, but they were, and I guess that was to be expected. I hardly ever saw any greasy girls there. And anyway, they looked rich, or at least richer.

As for my brother and Steve, I honestly had never expected them to write at all, or at least not right away, but – surprise, surprise – they did. It _wasn't_ right away, of course, and I didn't even have time to read it at home, but they had, nonetheless, and I was overjoyed if not interested in what Vietnam was like so far.

I read it during a break at work, or tried to. There were stairs in the back that lead out to a parking lot behind the building, and I sat up on the railing and smoked a cigarette and tried to get past the first line but somehow kept distracting myself. The final time that that happened wasn't even because of me. Somebody from inside had joined me on the back steps and decided to interrupt me.

"Who's it from?" a female voice demanded. I looked up. A tall, dark-haired girl stood opposite me, lighting her own cigarette. She couldn't have been too much older than me, maybe eighteen or nineteen if a day.

"Oh," I said, surprised. "It's from my brother."

"Really? He at college?"

She had a slight accent, something European. I guessed maybe Italian. She had the dark features akin to natives of Italy, but definitely not the height. I could be wrong, but most Italian people, at least that I knew of, were usually relatively short.

"No," I told her. "Vietnam."

Her eyes widened. "Wow. He's a soldier there?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

I looked back down at the letter, expecting another interruption, and got it. "I'm Carla Lombardi, by the way," the girl said.

I decided, judging by the surname, that she was indeed Italian.

I don't know why I had been so bent on figuring that out. Heritage was interesting, and all, but not _that _interesting.

"Nice to meet you," I said, hoping that the annoyance I was feeling wasn't noted. She seemed a bit scatterbrained, though – I don't think she would have noticed one way or the other. "I'm Eleanor."

"You're lucky," she said with a sigh. "You got a nice plain name. I got stuck with one of those names you don't hear so much."

I thought of my brothers and laughed. "You're not the only one."

She didn't ask what was so funny like I had expected her to, just ground out her cigarette with her foot and started back for the door. "I gotta get back to work," she said. "See ya inside."

Finally, I thought, and then instantly felt bad about it. She was a nice girl, really. Or at least she had seemed that way. I had only talked to her for a couple of minutes, and first impressions weren't always correct. But I really just wanted to read the letter. My break didn't last very long, and I figured I'd better take advantage of what little time I had left.

_September 12, 1967  
My Tho, South Vietnam  
Mekong Delta Region_

_Dear Eleanor,_

_We finally got to our unit just the other day. Took a while, but we made it. (And when I say 'we,' I do mean me and Steve – we actually got put in the same battalion _and_ platoon, which we were both really surprised about. I thought sure we'd be separated.) Anyway, so when you write back, you can actually write to an actual address and send that to the APO. I'll write it at the end of this though because I have a lot to tell you first._

_When we got here, we landed at Cam Ranh Bay, which is right on the coast of South Vietnam (I know you have a map of this place and I know you'll be trying to figure out where everything is now). I guess Cam Ranh Bay is where most of the U.S. troops come in or leave from, besides Tan Son Nhut. _

_We sat around for a while with a replacement battalion – doesn't that sound gross? We were replacements for guys who died. Steve told me not to tell you that, but I figured you'd want to know. Anyway, then we got orders for our unit, but we had to wait around even more until they figured out which platoon to put us with. (If there's one thing I've learned about being in the Army, it's that you do more waiting than you do anything else. Wait, wait, wait – that's it.) _

_We waited with this other new guy, Gardner, the only other new guy that had the same orders as us. He wouldn't stop talking. He was asking the usual questions – you know, what's your name, where you from, you scared, all that shit. You could tell _he _was scared. He couldn't stop shaking. He didn't talk to Steve all that much. I think he felt intimidated by him but you can probably understand that. _

_Oh yeah, and that Gardner kid didn't believe me when I told him my real name was Sodapop._

_Anyway, they finally gave us our orders for where we were going, and Gardner came with us. Like I said, I'll tell you our unit at the end of this, but we got put with Bravo Company, 1st Platoon. Beside us three there were no other new guys or privates in the platoon. They were all corporals or specialists, except for one, who was the platoon lieutenant. I guess I should probably tell you about some of those guys, I'm sure they'll come up pretty often._

_The LT's name is Campobello. I think his first name is Bill. He's from Indianapolis, and he says he's 25 but he looks younger. He's a lieutenant, though, so he can't be our age or anything. Anyway, he's married and he has two kids so maybe he's not lying. I guess he's a pretty good lieutenant though._

_Next there's J.P. Wilcox. I don't know what J.P. stands for though, so don't ask. He's black, and he's a spec. 5, and he's from Atlanta. I kinda like that guy. At the beginning when everyone else was calling us cherries and FNGs, well, he kinda stuck by us and told us who everyone was and what everything was and what to look out for, you know, that kinda thing. And he's funny. By the way, do you know who John Coltrane is? He's some jazz singer and J.P. likes him. He has the word "Trane" written on his helmet and when I asked what it meant he looked at me like I had three heads or something. _

_I'm doing this in order of how Wilcox introduced them to us, so next is Mike Terwilliger. I don't know what else to say about him except he's kinda quiet and he's always writing letters to his girlfriend. LT always gets on his case because he doesn't take his malaria pill like everyone else when he should. He's kinda always in his own world and I heard he takes tranquilizers because he's always scared about what's gonna happen. He's a corporal and he's from New Orleans. _

_David Canella is this tall athletic guy from a town in Illinois called Joliet. I guess he was on the baseball team or something in high school. He's a corporal too. _

_He hangs around a lot with this other guy, a spec. 4 from Lexington, Tennessee named Jake Sunnaret. Nobody calls him by his first name or his last name though. They call him Prophet, because he's really religious and carries one of those pocket bibles around with him and wears a rosary around his neck and prays a lot. I'm kinda curious why he and Canella are even friends, because I'll just say that Canella has a very colorful vocabulary. I guess it doesn't matter to them, though – they're like frick and frack. _

_I have to wrap this up soon, so I'll just go through the others real fast and explain later – Willie Fitzgerald is this other black guy, a corporal, from Asheville, North Carolina. Then there's Chester Sommers, a spec. 4 from Monterey, California. He goes by the nickname Chet. Then there's Pete Mackowiak, this Polish guy, a corporal from Flagstaff, Arizona. He doesn't go by his first or last name, either. They call him Viper because he's real mean and gung ho about being a soldier all the time, and apparently he's real good at getting the enemy. He swears he got ten guys with one grenade but I don't believe that, do you? And then lastly there's Ryan Finnegan, this Irish kid from Chicago. _

_Oh yeah, and Gardner? We found out he's from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. _

_I'll tell you more about what it's like so far next time I write. I think I'll write more often than I said I would because I've heard it gets real lonely out here, so that means you have to write a lot too, sis. And here's where you can send it: _

_You know my name, just put PFC in front of it (at least until I get promoted)  
Company B, 4th Battalion 9th Infantry  
198th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division_

_Tell everyone I said hey. And tell Darry and Ponyboy I'm gonna write to them, too, when I get a chance. But for now tell them I'm okay, I got here okay, and that in 350-something days I'll be home! _

_Love,  
Soda _

_P.S. Steve says he'll add something another time. LT's teaching him how to operate the M-60 right now. I don't know about you, but I'm not so sure Steve and a machine gun is all that great of a mix … _

When I finished reading, I breathed a sigh of relief. So they were okay. They had gotten there all right. They were fine. Did I really have to worry? Of course I did. But knowing that they were okay, for now, really made me feel better about everything.

Back inside, I passed by Carla, who was busy cutting blunt bangs à la Jean Shrimpton for some chick, and when she saw me she waved. The girl with the bangs followed Carla's gaze over to me, wondering who her stylist was waving at, and when she saw me she stopped.

"Hey," she said. "I think I know you."

I walked over to the chair. With a disgruntled look, Carla gave her Aqua Net can a shake and then walked off, claiming she was out of hairspray, and left me standing there next to this strange girl.

"You know me?" I said. "From where?"

"You remember seventh grade? President Kennedy?" She twirled a beaded bracelet around her wrist nervously. "I'm Barbara."

And then suddenly, as if I'd just been struck by a bolt of lightning, I did remember. I remembered the long blonde hair, the fervent, vengeful brown eyes, the cruel, contorted expression. I remembered November 22, 1963.

I remembered her, the mean girl who sat next to me that day.

Barbara Callahan.

"Oh," I said, startled. "Hi, Barbara."

xxx

**APO: **Army Post Office located in San Francisco for overseas mail to Vietnam  
**LT: **lieutenant  
**Spec. 5: **Specialist Fifth Class; equivalent to a sergeant  
**Cherry (or cherries): **a new troop replacement  
**FNG: **fucking new guy  
**Spec. 4: **Specialist Fourth Class; an Army rank equivalent to a corporal  
**M-60: **the standard lightweight machine gun used by U.S. forces in Vietnam; it's bigger than the M-16 gas-operated assault rifle though and to use it you can either use it the same as an M-16 or set it on a tripod on the ground (that's why if you've ever seen one in movies, they have those three things hanging off the end of the barrel)

**A/N: **A couple of the mentioned soldiers' first and last names were borrowed either from various books or my brother's friends. I was debating with including them all in the letter, and finally decided to, as all of them will appear again in an upcoming fic that will exist in the same world as _Don't Think Twice;_ this fic will follow Soda and Steve in Vietnam through more than just the letters they send to Eleanor.

Reviews are appreciated!


	17. Seventeen

**A/N: **I guess it's not really like me to update in two days, huh? Well, here it is, anyway. Happy New Year, as well, in case I don't have the chance to update again before then. I hope everyone rings in 2007 in good spirits. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and performed by The Beatles.

---

**Chapter Seventeen: **

" … _I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me … "_

November hit me with more force than I had prepared myself for, and it was only then, with that force, that I realized just how empty not only my life but everything in general had become without Soda and Steve around.

Quiet, sure – of course you could call it that. Tranquil and peaceful, maybe, too, and almost sort of awkward. But empty, because things – opinions, mostly – had changed. Because this god-awful war could return them physically unharmed, but one could only imagine how wounded they would be otherwise. And just that thought alone – not even accompanied by the prospect of them getting killed over there – brought up this emptiness inside of me the like of which I had never known, or even wanted to know. An emptiness I was sure wasn't going to leave me.

It made me think a lot. It wasn't a hungry, longing emptiness. Just an emptiness. That's all. And perhaps it had been there since they'd left, and I'd just been reluctant, maybe even afraid, to acknowledge it.

Regardless, I was determined to push it aside, for now. There was nothing worse than feeling burdened by some _thing _that you couldn't do anything about, and I had plans to get my mind off of it.

One crisp Saturday afternoon I remembered the form for the VA hospital, and I asked Darry if I could drop it off there, and he told me I could, but was sure to warn me to be careful, as I'd be walking, and I promised I would be, and when I stepped outside I was greeted by the cool late autumn air that left me wishing I'd brought a jacket as I started down the long stretch of sidewalk. A breeze had picked up, too, which didn't help. I almost went back to put on something warmer, but when I turned around I realized how far away I was already, and going back would only waste daylight.

By the time I got there I think my toes and my fingers had gone numb, and it was a relief just to be inside. I could feel my body temperature rise almost instantly. An older, maybe forty-something man – outpatient, I was assuming – sat in one of the chairs in the lobby, looking through an issue of _Life _provided by the management. I don't think they had restocked their magazine selection in a while, though, because I recognized that issue from the summer; the cover was graced by the outlandishly beautiful German model, Veruschka.

The man looked up when I passed him, and I smiled by way of saying hello. In return, he raised a hand with only three fingers to wave. Out of politeness and respect I didn't let my surprise show, but men with only three fingers was not something you saw on a daily basis, and when he waved my stomach gave a violent, sick turn. Don't let just that get to you, Eleanor, I told myself. That isn't the worst you're going to see here, so you'd better get used to it.

The man looked too old to be a Vietnam veteran. Even Korea veterans looked younger than he did. My only guess was World War II.

I continued on down the hall until I came to the office where I'd come the first day. Maureen sat at the desk, her reading glasses perched atop her head as she sifted through a stack of papers. When she looked up and saw me, she smiled.

"Eleanor!" she said brightly. I was surprised she'd remembered my name. "I wasn't so sure you were coming back."

"I was planning on it," I told her. "I couldn't get around to it. A lot of things have been going on in between …"

"Your brother?" she wondered, though there was a knowing tone in her voice, and I suddenly remembered her husband.

"Yeah," I said. "They're okay, though. Or at least, that's what they tell me."

"'They'?"

I nodded. I thought I'd mentioned it to her before, but maybe I hadn't. "Him and Steve."

"He's your brother, too?"

"No," I clarified. "Well, sort of, I guess, in a way. My best friend. They both are. Anyway," I went on, not wanting to dwell on the subject anymore than I had to, "here's the form."

"Oh, that's great. I'll make sure Lieutenant Ferguson gets it." She took it from me, set it aside, and then stopped abruptly. Her hand was caught in a rigid state, and the previously content expression in her eyes was replaced with something pained.

"Are you all right?" I demanded. "What's the matter?"

A moment passed and she relaxed. "Oh … I'm fine, honey," she assured me. I winced at the word 'honey' – Steve called me that when I was upset, or in a bad mood – and the emptiness returned, but only for a moment, and then I think I was normal again. " … Just get these pains sometimes."

Pains. I remembered she had been pregnant. Still was.

"How far along are you now?"

"Eight months," she said, this time more cheerily. It was evident that she was looking forward to having her baby, and to the experience of being a mother. "I'm going on maternity leave pretty soon, so I won't be here for a while. But you know something? Frank's tour is almost up …"

"Your husband?"

"Yeah. In his letters, he always tells me how excited he is to be a father. I'm just anxious for him to get home safe."

I nodded, understanding. The feeling was mutual, though on a different level.

"Anyway," she said, "I'm glad you came down here today. I wanted to show you around last time, but I didn't think of it. It's definite, though, right? You're going to volunteer here?"

"Yes," I said.

"Great," she said, and stood up. "Come along with me. I'll show you around some of the wards they might stick you in."

I chuckled. "'Stick me in'? You make it sound like a bad thing."

"Well" – she smiled, too, and either by instinct or on impulse rubbed her swollen abdomen endearingly – "you know what I mean."

She took me around to some of the medical wards there, some smaller than others but each with about fifteen or twenty occupied beds. It wasn't completely drab and boring like that, though. There were tables in the rooms so the soldiers could play cards or board games, and some weren't even in their beds at all – they were either in their wheelchairs, hanging out with somebody on the other side of the room, or actually up walking around, if they could.

It looked almost kind of comfortable, and with the exception of a few, most of the soldiers seemed enthusiastic and happy to be alive. I guess I would have been, too – what trauma they all must have had to endure.

"Those are all Vietnam veterans," Maureen explained. "They're all young, and easily bored or distracted, especially after being here for as long as some of them have been. The men in the World War I and II wards are not quite as energetic."

I stopped suddenly. "Wait. Did you say World War I?"

She nodded and walked ahead of me. "Mhmm."

Could that even be right? World War I? It seemed so uncanny to me that there were still men here from that era. That was fifty years ago!

Boy, wait until I told – well, wait a second … who _could_ I tell? I didn't think Darry would be very interested in that. Ponyboy, maybe, but definitely not Two-Bit. History was about as interesting to him as movies were to Soda, which didn't add up to much. I could tell him and Steve in a letter, sure, but by the time they got it, it wouldn't even be important anymore.

Lately, I had really begun to lose sleep over the dumbest things.

After school on Tuesday, I stopped at home briefly, and then went back down to the VA. I was starting my volunteer work there, and while I had been relatively excited about it before, I was now feeling sort of nervous and jumpy. What if Darry was right? What if it would turn out to be too much for me? What if I couldn't handle it?

God, El, snap out of it, I reprimanded myself. If Soda or Steve come back from the war limbless, you can't run away from that. You may not be able to handle it, but it won't make it disappear.

Besides, I'd made my decision already. I wanted to do this.

Lieutenant Ferguson put me to work in the Vietnam veteran ward. She said it would be better for me, since this war had already come to play such a major role in my life. My ward was full of a bunch of rowdy guys, which in all honesty was not anything new to me, and I was pretty confident that I could handle it. Lieutenant Ferguson looked suspicious and wary, seeing as besides the few nurses who looked after the soldiers in this ward I was really the only volunteer – and fairly young, at that – but it must not have been something she was terribly bothered by, for after giving me instructions and telling me who to go to if there was a problem, she went on about her business.

My tasks were simple. While the soldiers were at physical therapy or in the bathroom – which took some of them longer than normal, if they were yoked to a wheelchair or a walker – I was supposed to change their sheets. I passed out orange juice. And because it was therapeutic, I was supposed to talk to some of them, especially the ones who had been really mentally screwed up by of the war. Apparently, my talking to them was supposed to help, even if they never said anything back. And I could talk about anything, within reason.

Mentioning the war, though, Lieutenant Ferguson had said, even to say I had someone I knew fighting over there, was out of the question, because in the past, it had caused some of those emotionally fried soldiers to have setbacks and horrible flashbacks that hadn't ended well at all. I didn't want to be the reason for something like that to happen again.

After she introduced me to the ward as "Eleanor, our latest altruist," there were the usual catcalls and whistles that were to be expected because I was a new girl in their midst. And assuming most of them had been here for a while, I figured girls – besides the nurses – were probably pretty foreign, and so I tried to be a good sport about it.

Lieutenant Ferguson pointed to an empty bed in the corner. "Hollywood – that's what they call him here – is at physical therapy right now. You can start with his sheets."

I nodded, and as I passed by the row of beds on the right, there was a chorus of "What's cookin', good lookin'?," "Hey, pretty lady," and "Wow, there _is_ a God," among other innuendos, and I just smiled and played along, because I knew that's what they wanted. Besides, they would have said it to any girl that had volunteered, and I was sure a lot of it was a competition for my attention and a way to humor me. Not to mention men were famous for things like that.

I reached the other side of the room and had just started to strip the bed of the sheets when from behind me came, "Don't pay any attention to them, sweetheart." I turned to find the voice's owner and was met with a handsome dark-haired young soldier who smiled at me. "They're just a buncha kids who don't know how to treat a nice lady like yourself with respect."

I laughed, blushing, and pushed my hair back behind my ear. I wasn't sure what to say back, but he took care of that problem for me.

"So, there's a rumor going around that your brother's over there," he said. I knew what he meant. _Over there _had quickly become synonymous with _Vietnam._

I forced a smile. I didn't like discussing it that much unless I absolutely had to, and I couldn't really avoid it, this time. "Yeah. Guess who started it?"

He looked at me thoughtfully. "You mean it's true?"

"It is. My friend's over there, too. They're in the same battalion. And platoon, coincidentally."

"Army?"

I nodded. "How'd you know?"

"You just seem like an Army kinda gal." He paused. "Or at least the kind that's associated with people in the Army. Like me, for example."

"Oh, _you're _in the Army?"

"Yeah, couldn't ya tell?"

"I'm supposed to know by looking at people?"

"Well, you should at this point. I mean, if you got loved ones over there."

_Loved ones. _That was an understatement. "Do I look like a military genius?"

He laughed and shook his head. "You obviously know somethin', if you're here. Besides," he added, "Army and Marines are the only branches that have battalions."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that the rumor was that your brother had been drafted. So I figured it had to be the Army, since that's the only branch that drafts people."

"Good work, Frank Hardy," I quipped. "Your brother Joe help you with that one, or did you figure it out on your own?"

"Actually," he said, "I got some assistance from Nancy Drew on that one. Thanks, Nan."

"It's Eleanor. And I'm no good at mysteries, anyway."

He just laughed and extended his hand. "John Pace," he told me. "But most people just call me Jack."

"Oh," I said. "Most people just call me … Eleanor."

I had almost said _El, _but that was Soda and Steve's nickname for me. I didn't want anybody else to call me that. Not then, anyway, because they were really the only ones that ever called me that.

"That's a real nice name. Very old-fashioned," he said, and I thanked him. "Now aren't you gonna shake my hand, or what?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm sorry."

And we shook hands.

I turned my attention back to the sheets, taking the soiled ones over to a bin in the corner, and returning a moment later with fresh ones. It wasn't so difficult. All the while, though, Jack kept watching me, nearly putting a hole through me with that intense, studious gaze, and when he wasn't looking he was talking in a low voice to the kid in the wheelchair next to him.

Eventually it began to bother me.

"What?" I demanded sharply. "What _is_ it?"

"Oh, nothing, I just … wanted you to meet my buddy here. Eleanor … Trevor Buckingham."

The kid in the wheelchair – Trevor – rolled himself around the foot of Jack's bed so that I could see he only had one leg. I remembered the man with three fingers, and how I'd felt almost nauseated by that, but this time I didn't flinch.

"This scare ya?" Trevor asked me.

I shook my head. "Not at all."

"Swell." He grinned and extended his arm the way Jack had. "Hiya. I'm Trevor."

"I'm Eleanor," I replied, and shook his hand.

I learned that Trevor was about twenty-one or so, and from what I could see, he and Jack were very close friends. According to Hollywood, who had returned from physical therapy soon after I'd finished with his sheets and who occupied the bed kitty-corner to Jack, around they ward the two were known jokingly as Fuckingham and Jackoff. I thought that was hysterical.

Trevor was in the Army, too, and had served with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam and had, like I had already seen for myself, lost his left leg there. I kept meaning to ask him how it had happened, but I didn't want to appear rude, and I wasn't even sure he would really want to talk about it. Despite that, though, from the amount of time I spent around him on the first day, I could already see that he seemed very jubilant and overjoyed to be alive, and with him around, there was never a dull moment. In a way, his light, cheery personality reminded me of Sodapop.

Around five, Lieutenant Ferguson came back and relieved me of my duties, but I decided to stick around a little while longer anyway. I had a feeling Jack and Trevor were going to become good friends of mine, and I figured I might as well get to know them a little better.

I told them I was going to stay, and they both looked mighty happy about that, grinning from ear to ear, and Trevor pulled me down to his level and said, "Good thing. I think Lieutenant Pace over here's got a crush on ya, sister."

I blushed and stood back up, straightening myself and looking over at Jack. I didn't know if that was necessarily true, and I wasn't going to put him on the spot by questioning him about it. Besides, Trevor's mention of Jack's rank status in the military sparked some curiosity within me. "You were a lieutenant?" I wondered.

Jack nodded, looking quite proud of himself. "I led a rifle platoon south of Da Nang," he explained. "One of the best damn platoons in the Nam, too, if I do say so myself."

"If it was so great," Trevor disagreed, "then why'd their platoon leader get messed up and evac'd back to the World?"

"Because their platoon leader's radio man made a mistake in coordinates," Jack argued.

"Our radio man never did anything like that," Trevor said. "The only reason I don't got a leg is 'cause I stepped on a mine. But we would have seen that if it wasn't so well-hidden, and I could have avoided it. Fact o' the matter is, if someone had seen that thing, I prolly wouldn't even be here right now."

"Look, man, I'm not trying to compete with you," Jack said defensively.

"Beat or cheat or mistreat you," I added poetically.

Trevor seemed to forget about Jack for a moment, and smiled at me. "You dig Dylan?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Far out, man. Me, too."

"Far out," I laughed, and then looked back over at Jack. "So, where you from?"

"Chicago," he told me. "Well, a suburb, actually. But close enough."

"Chicago, huh? Why'd they send you all the way down here?"

"I'm from Cincinnati," Trevor said, and we both looked at him. "You know, Ohio?"

"Who asked you, man?" Jack said.

"I'm just sayin'. She asked why you're all the way down here, and I thought … well, y'know, since we're both from up north … aw, shit. Forget it."

"Yeah," Jack agreed, and looked back at me. "I don't know why, really. Guess they send you wherever they got room."

I spent another half hour with them, and then I realized how late it had become – it was quarter to six – and I decided I'd better head home. It was already dark out, and I knew I shouldn't be walking home by myself, at night, but I didn't think to call anybody. Otherwise I would have. As luck would have it, though, Maureen was leaving at the same time I was, and because her pregnancy kept her from fitting behind the steering wheel of her car, she took the bus home instead. She suggested I come with her; that way I wouldn't have to walk.

It worked out. I got home safe, and quicker than I suspected I would, too. I did get stuck with making dinner, however, because Pony declared he wasn't doing it on account of homework and Darry was busy with some bills. I was in a fairly good mood, though, so I didn't really mind.

"So, this VA hospital," Darry said after we sat down to eat. "What'd you think?"

"I like it," I replied. "It's …" How could I describe it? Tragic? Sad? No, because that hadn't been my impression of it today. Those soldiers didn't look tragic _or _sad. They looked … happy. "Cool," I finished at last. "It's cool."

"You would think something like that is cool," Ponyboy said.

"Well," I shot back good-naturedly, "I liked it."

"You hear anything from Soda or Steve lately?" Darry wondered.

"No, I haven't," I told him, but I wasn't worried. If anything, they probably didn't have time to write. Still, though, at the mention of either of them, I felt that emptiness return. "Have you?"

He shook his head. I nodded, and for a moment I thought about Jack and Trevor and Hollywood, but mostly I thought about Jack, and the way he had been looking at me while I was busy changing Hollywood's sheets.

When I raked my mind again for the emptiness I was sure was still there, I couldn't find it.

It was gone.

xxx

**the World: **always with a capital W; how American soldiers in Vietnam referred to the United States, and only the United States (although they could be referring to other places in some cases)

**A/N: **Hm, sounds like Eleanor is a little torn in half right now. And by the way, there really was a German model in the Sixties named Veruschka, and there really was a summer 1967 issue of _Life _with her picture on the cover (I've seen it; she is gorgeous). Her father was executed for plotting to kill Hitler. Just a little bit of trivia for you there. :)

Reviews are appreciated!


	18. Eighteen

**A/N: **I don't think that anybody noticed this, but in the last chapter I got the Bob Dylan lyrics wrong. I was recently listening to Cher's version of the song Eleanor and Trevor were discussing ("All I Really Want to Do"), and I realized the "beat or treat or mistreat you" line is actually "beat or cheat or mistreat you." I went back and edited the chapter, but I just wanted to point that out, because it was bothering me. :)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "'Fish' Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag," written by Joe McDonald and performed by Country Joe and The Fish.

---

**Chapter Eighteen:**

" … _be the first one on your block / to have your boy come home in a box … "_

"My parents are missionaries. That's why you haven't seen me around since about '64. We've been living in Africa for the past two and a half years."

So that's where Barbara had gotten her tan.

"Gee," I replied, surprised. "Africa?"

"Yeah. It was kind of like being on vacation all the time, except for when it got _really _hot. It got that way a lot."

"What did your parents do there?"

It was a curious thing, and very interesting, too. Thinking back to the day of the Kennedy assassination, and how Barbara, in her cruelly polite manner, had basically told me to shut up, I never would have suspected her parents being missionaries.

"They did good things for some of the poorer communities. I felt bad – there were a lot of sick kids, you know, from malnutrition and things like that. That's really why my parents were there, to help them. And to preach to them about God, since that's what missionaries do."

"I think that's nice," I said. "I mean, bettering society like that – that's a good thing. How come you moved back?"

She bit her lip and thought for a moment, glancing around my bedroom as she did so, and I wondered if she even really knew at all.

It was a weekend. We were doing homework together, because I had realized, after the initial shock had worn off upon meeting Barbara again at the hair salon, that she was in my math class at school. She had gone heretofore unrecognized by me, because of her tan, and her hair had grown considerably longer. Not to mention we'd been in seventh grade the last time we'd seen one another, so naturally almost everything about her was different.

"I think maybe they just got tired of it all," she admitted finally. "It _was _kind of depressing. But anyway" – she dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand – "what have you been up to these days? Anything interesting?"

I laughed. "Nothing that I've been doing could possibly be more interesting than living in Africa, Barbara."

She'd been lying on her stomach on my floor, but she sat up then and looked at me imploringly. "Come on," she prodded. "Let's hear it."

I sighed, realizing I couldn't tell her one thing without filling her in on the event that preceded it, because it all seemed linked together somehow, and so by the time I was finished, she kind of knew everything, beginning with my parents' deaths.

"Gee …" she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "That's terrible. I'm so sorry."

I nodded. I couldn't just brush it off and say, "Oh, it's okay," because it wasn't. None of it was.

"But, wait … so you're saying … in seventh grade, those two boys you were always waving to on the other side of the hall … they're in Vietnam right now?"

I hesitated, and then answered her question with another nod.

"Gosh. That's so hard to believe. And all that time I thought you were just flirting with them."

I scowled. "Flirting? Never. And certainly not with my own brother. I think that's illegal."

"And a little gross," she added, giggling girlishly. Inwardly, I cursed myself for even trying to strike up a friendship with her. She was already beginning to annoy me. And the fact that all she had gotten out of my confessing everything that had happened to me and my family in the past year and a half was that she thought I was 'flirting' with Soda and Steve really made me mad.

"But is that why you were always giving me those dirty looks back then?" I demanded. It didn't bother me that I'd just put her on the spot, either. I wanted to know why.

"No." She was stony-faced, and her gaze remained focused on the carpeting. After a long moment of silence she looked up at me, her expression this time seeking forgiveness. "To be completely honest with you, I don't even know why I did that."

"You wanted something to hate," I said indifferently. She furrowed her brow. "You were upset about something, and you needed somebody to blame." I bit my lip and watched her face change, and then nodded. "I'm right, aren't I? Because I know what that looks like, Barbara."

"I suppose you do," she said quietly. "I don't know. Maybe that was why. It could have been something else. It could have been a lot of things. I'm sorry."

"Yeah," I replied.

"Look," she said, and stood up. "I have to get going now. But I meant to tell you – I know somebody in Vietnam, too."

"You do?"

"Mhmm. My cousin. He's a Marine. He's up at Khe Sanh, out on Hill 881S."

I didn't know then, however, that in the coming months, Khe Sanh was going to become a household name. And I didn't know then how grateful I would be that Soda and Steve weren't anywhere near there.

Tuesday was my VA day, and after meeting Jack and Trevor and most of the other soldiers there, I was really looking forward to it, but a rather gut-wrenching letter from my brother and Steve made me seriously reconsider going that day at all.

_November 16, 1967  
IV Corps, South Vietnam_

_Eleanor – _

_You remember that Gardner kid? Well, he got wasted yesterday. _

_I don't even want to tell you this, but I don't know, maybe it will make me feel better. We were on patrol out in the rice paddies. It was real bad out there, heat and humidity you've never felt in your life, and most of us were about ready to drop dead from it, I think. _

_LT had Gardner on point, which was a big mistake in my book. You just don't make a scared shitless kid like Gardner the point man. I wouldn't have, anyway._

_We hadn't gone that far, a couple klicks or so maybe, and Gardner stopped and reached down into a paddy dike with the end of his rifle to investigate something, and then all of a sudden there was this explosion, and this sick sounding scream, and it seemed like he'd gotten blown at least 50 feet in the air, but I knew it was less than that. But it was a booby trap that got him, El. A rigged claymore or C-ration can, or something. _

_The medic – I forgot to mention in past letters, Canella's our medic – he got over there first, and LT told the rest of us to stay put in case there were more, or in case it was an ambush and the gooks were hiding out, waiting to attack now that we were preoccupied, but nobody really listened. It was too much of a shock. Steve ran over there too and kneeled down next to Gardner's body, and I think I would have stayed where I was out of fear but I went over after a minute too. I don't know why – neither of us has been here that long, and we haven't lost anybody in the platoon yet though we've gotten mighty close, and maybe I just wanted to see what death looked like. _

_El, it was real bad. I mean _real _bad. Gardner … he was all messed up. The back of his head, it was a mess. I don't know if it was gone or what, but it sure looked that way. Pieces of shrapnel had cut up his throat and there were these awful gurgling noises coming from it and his mouth, and he kept spitting up blood. I was surprised he was even still alive. His shirt was all ripped apart and his chest was all cut up and bloody, and every time his heart beat more blood came out. His right hand was shaking pretty bad and his other he had clutched at his side. You know why? _

_He was holding his guts in, Eleanor. With his one hand he was holding it all in, because if he moved his hand it would all spill out into the mud. _

_Steve kept talking to him, telling him he wasn't gonna die and all that, but we all knew he was anyway. You don't live through something like that. The RTO radioed in to get a chopper out here, and we kept telling him to hang on a little while longer, the Freedom Bird was on its way, but it was useless. He died before the chopper even got there. When it did come we helped LT lay his body in there and – this might sound really gross to you – when a guy dies you shove his dog tags up between his front two teeth or if his head gets blown off you tape them to his wrist. Well, since his head was still intact, we shoved the tags between his teeth and LT gave the pilot the signal and then he was gone. Just like that._

_Later on Steve wrote FTA on his helmet and so did I. I'm really starting to hate this place, sis. _

_Love,  
Sodapop_

_P.S. Steve wants to add something, so here. _

_El – _

_I hate it here. And those stupid gooks that got Gardner, they should pay for that. Gardner was a good guy, he didn't deserve it. LT says we gotta forget about it and keep moving, because it happens all the time, but how do you forget something like that? _

_Anyway, keep the letters coming, honey – it's about all we can look forward to out here. _

_Steve_

I felt my knees go weak, for I had never expected anything like that. They talked about Gardner a lot – about how the other guys made fun of him because he wasn't exactly soldier material, about how they called him an REMF and made up silly nicknames. It had always upset me, that they could be so heartless, and so I remember I'd written Gardner my own letter not too long ago, telling him I was sorry about the other guys, and that I hoped Soda and Steve weren't being like that towards him but I was sure I knew them better.

He hadn't written back, but I hadn't expected him to. I was only trying to be nice.

And now he was dead. Gone forever. I couldn't even begin to imagine the anguish of his family.

It was even more horrible to think that half of America could care less that their boys were returning from the war in flag-draped pine boxes.

Half of America just wanted to pretend it all didn't exist.

xxx

**IV Corps: **the southernmost military region into which South Vietnam was divided; there were four regions, I Corps (or 'Eye Corps'), II Corps, III Corps, and IV Corps  
**Wasted: **got killed, died, etc.  
**Point: **walking lead in a patrol  
**Klicks: **kilometers  
**Claymore: **an antipersonnel mine which, when detonated, propelled small steel pellets in a 60-degree fan-shaped pattern to a maximum distance of 100 meters; often duds would be rigged into booby traps, or active ones would be turned around to face the American soldiers so when the wire was tripped it would explode on them instead of the enemy  
**C-ration: **combat rations; canned meals for use in the field  
**Gook: **derogatory term for the Oriental; also "dink" and "slope"  
**RTO: **radiotelephone operator; the man who carries his unit's radio on his back in the field  
**Freedom Bird: **any aircraft carrying soldiers back to the World (USA)  
**FTA: **Fuck the Army; many soldiers who hated being in Vietnam used this acronym and would write it on their helmets  
**REMF: **rear-echelon motherfucker, a term used to describe any soldier who purposely stayed at the back of the line and avoided fighting

**A/N: **I thought sure I wouldn't be updating again, but here I did it anyway, and in another two days too. I must be on a creative streak or something. Anyway, Happy New Year (again)!

Oh, I also hope that it sounds realistic for Barbara's parents to have been missionaries, thus explaining her prolonged absence. If not, let me know—and please, give me some ideas on how I can change it, if that's the case.

Reviews are appreciated!


	19. Nineteen

**A/N: **Ack, sorry for the delay—school starting again and chronic headaches have been a contributing factor in my lack of motivation there. Anyway, here's Chapter Nineteen.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "The War Drags On," written by Mick Softley and performed by Donovan.

---

**Chapter Nineteen: **

" … _just more blood-letting and misery and tears / that this poor country's known for the last twenty years … "_

_February, 1968_

A massive troop build-up at and around Khe Sanh. That's what the news told us at the beginning of January, and truthfully, it didn't sound all that bad. I had been practicing worrying less, not only for the sake of my own sanity but for my brothers' as well, and so far, it seemed to be working. I just let this one blow over as another headline. Aside from the usual on the newspaper – VIETNAM WAR DEAD FROM THIS AREA – there was a new one every week, anyway.

Now, though, I realized just how wrong I had been, and how blind. Now they were calling it a siege. Now they were telling us that that's what that massive troop build-up was, that the Marines were cut off and surrounded by this elusive enemy, and that this could quite possibly become a landmark – maybe even legendary – twentieth century battle.

It was a part of what they were calling the Tet Offensive. Tet was a holiday, they'd said, but they didn't go into much detail, so I, being curious and feeling as if it would help me to understand better, went and looked it up. And they were right – it was a holiday. Tet was the Chinese Lunar New Year, supposedly bigger than our New Year, Christmas, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one.

But discovering that only deepened my confusion. In unison with the Khe Sanh siege, the VC and the NVA were also using the blind opportunity that Tet gave to attack South Vietnam's major towns and cities. That's the part that I couldn't understand.

I often complained – loudly – when I watched the news in the evenings, as I'm sure many other viewers did right along with me. But I wasn't a professional activist and it wasn't as if anybody would listen if I decided to stand up in a public place and start expressing my political views and why I knew the war was wrong – I was just a silly teenager, after all – and so I had to do it somewhere.

"It just doesn't make any sense!" I exclaimed. I was trying to finish my chemistry homework, but I had the TV on in the background, and so naturally I hadn't gotten very far. "Why would they attack their own cities on their own holiday? Who in their right mind _does _that?"

"I guess they do," Ponyboy said, and pointed to the television. They showed images of American soldiers now, but I knew what he meant.

"It's _so _stupid," I said tiredly, and shook my head. I didn't feel like doing my chemistry homework anymore. It no longer felt as important as it should have been. "I guess I'm just glad Soda and Steve aren't up there. At Khe Sanh, I mean. I heard it's real bad. And if something happened … I just … I don't know what I'd do without them."

Pony looked concerned, and I could see his worry, too. It was for a completely different reason than my own, but it was still present. He looked as if he were about to say something, but Darry came in then, interrupting him.

"You do know North and South Vietnam are divided, don't you?" he said. There were a few shirts slung over his arm, and I figured he was probably doing laundry.

"I always knew that," I replied. "And North Vietnam wants South Vietnam to be Communist. I knew that, too. Why?"

"Well, then if they're divided, they're not exactly attacking their own cities, are they?"

Ponyboy started laughing at my expense as I realized my mistake. "Guess that means you don't know everything after all, huh, Eleanor?"

"I never said I knew everything," I retorted, and looked back at Darry, who just looked proud of the fact that he was right and I wasn't. "And just because you say that doesn't mean it automatically makes sense to me, you know," I told him. "It's still pointless."

"Yeah, sure. But I knew something that you didn't. And glory, Eleanor, I don't think I'll ever let you hear the end of that."

He'd certainly put me in my place for once. I decided I'd better just keep my mouth shut now, and, ignoring him as he laughed at me and disappeared down the hall, I busied myself with what was left of my chemistry homework, feigning a sudden interest, and remained that way for the rest of the hour.

I still made it a point to watch the news every night, but it was always the same. Unchanging. The war had become a stalemate, even at Khe Sanh. They just waited up there, all day and all night, for an attack that never seemed to occur.

Later in the week, I got another letter from Soda and Steve, this time from Saigon. Apparently, three confirmed kills had earned both of them and a few other guys in their platoon a week-long R and R in Singapore, and now they were back and getting ready to return to their unit in what they called the boonies. I wasn't sure what that meant exactly, but I assumed it had something to do with being down in the Delta, and the rice paddies, and the heat and the mud.

Singapore was great, though, Soda had said. It had been nice to escape the war, for a little while, at least. I figured it had to have been better than nothing. He talked about some of the things they did there, and that when they'd gotten back to Saigon they'd been allowed to stop off at the PX where, apparently, you could buy anything from cigarettes to condoms to paperback novels. Steve said it was like a grocery store in the middle of nowhere, the only difference being the Vietnamese personnel. He said that he and Soda had gotten lots of cigarettes there, which came as no surprise to me.

Soda said he was suspicious, though, that Steve had gotten some heavy drugs there. Not at the PX, but in Saigon. Heartbreakingly enough, Saigon was a city with a dense population of kids without parents, and many of them were VC sympathizers who sold things like heroin and marijuana to GIs on the streets. It was a sad thing – the combat in the field wasn't the only war going on there, seemingly – and it worried me terribly to think Steve would do something like that. The way I saw it, drugs were the equivalent to an escape from reality, which could only mean the war must have been getting real bad for them.

I only came to that conclusion because I knew there were things they didn't tell me. I knew that whatever they went through on patrols in the field was worse than they let on. When they said "so-and-so bought it," without going into much more detail than that, I knew there was more behind it. And despite the already-present harshness in detail that Soda had given me in his letter concerning Gardner's death, I knew that it wasn't even half that bad, or gory. I don't know how I knew; I just did. Perhaps it was born of the fact that I already knew both of them so well, it was just natural.

The better part of the letter was that they'd sent me pictures, which at first I just found funny. It made it seem as if they weren't really at war, but instead on some exotic vacation. There were three, and I laughed when they fell out of the envelope. Ponyboy asked me what was so funny, and I told him, and he said he wanted to see them when I was finished.

The first one was a photo of the entrance to some primitive-looking living area. There was a homemade sign above the doorway that said "Home is Where You Dig It." It was a bit too dark to see inside, so I couldn't really tell exactly _what _it was, but on the back, I discovered, the words _This is where we sleep, eat, write letters, etc. when we're back at base camp _were scrawled in rather rushed handwriting. I couldn't tell which one of them had written it, but that didn't matter; it had answered my question.

The second, and probably my favorite, was of the two of them, and another guy, a tall, handsome-looking black guy with lots of muscle and a laid-back grin on his face. He wore no shirt, just fatigues and combat boots and the chain around his neck that held his dog tags. In one hand he kept his helmet planted firm against his hip, while his other seemed to be clapping Soda on the shoulder. Soda was in the middle, in between the black guy and Steve. You could see how the war had exhausted and disturbed him already, but he was grinning anyway. Appearance wise, he looked thinner than the last time I'd seen him, which was probably to be expected judging by the conditions they were living under, and he wore basically the same things as the black guy, except his helmet was nowhere to be seen. I couldn't help hoping that, whenever the photograph had been taken, they were in a relatively safe and secure location.

He had his arm on Steve's shoulder. Both of them looked as tough as they always were, made even tougher by the sick effects of the war. Steve looked basically the same as the other two, clothing-wise, but he seemed thinner as well, and needed a shave. He had a rather content smirk on his face, and he looked older than eighteen. There was a pack of cigarettes underneath his helmet band. He had his gun with him – the M-60, I was assuming, because it was slightly larger than the M-16s I was accustomed to seeing the soldiers carrying on the television – and had shouldered it, most likely to give off the illusion that he was real gung ho about being a soldier. He looked that way, too. In fact, come to think of it, even though I knew it was him, I hardly recognized him.

On the back, it said that the third guy was their buddy Wilcox, who I knew they both must have been rather close to, for Soda spoke frequently of him in his letters.

The third was a hazy green image of mountains rising up against and behind other mountains, all of which stood sentry over a field of rice paddies. The view from the base camp, according to what was written on the back. It was lovely, I thought. In the letter, Soda said that he thought I might like to know that it was really a very pretty country, even though there was a war going on, and that I should visit sometime. Maybe one day when the war was over, when things had quieted down, maybe then I could come and see it, he'd said. I couldn't help laughing at that, either. Yes, it _was _very pretty – that was hard to dispute – but I couldn't seem to think of any reason why I would want to visit.

Later on I showed both of my brothers the pictures, and let them read the letter, too. Usually I didn't, because I got separate ones altogether, but this time it seemed appropriate.

Afterwards Darry sat solemnly, his eyes still scanning over the pictures and the letter. I knew why.

"There's a lot of guys they don't seem to mention anymore," I said.

He nodded.

"Does that mean what I think it means?"

He nodded again.

Oh, I thought helplessly. Damn.

Tuesday I had the VA, and I also had off of work, which was a relief. Carla was taking a double shift, so I didn't have to come in. It was a nice break, and since I didn't have to go to the VA until four-thirty, I decided to stop at the store and pick up a few things we needed. We were definitely out of bread, anyway, and my supply of lemonade was nearly extinct.

I spent a half hour at the store – I was known to be rather quick there, just in and out – and dropped the groceries off at home, and then from there walked across town to the VA. My ward was rather rowdy, which was generally the norm, and there were about four or five of the guys grouped together at a corner bed playing poker. One of them occupied the bed, and his leg was in traction, so I figured they'd brought the game to him. They were listening to a transistor radio; it was playing "All Along the Watchtower."

None of them noticed me right away, so I started emptying wastebaskets around the room. Lieutenant Ferguson hadn't given me anything specific to do, and most of them were full, or almost full, anyway.

"Hey, Eleanor," I heard Trevor say, and I smiled at him, though there was a rather contorted expression on his face.

"Hi, Trevor. What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothin' … I just get these phantom itches in my … well, where my leg used to be, but I can't do nothin' about 'em. It's real uncomfortable."

"I'll bet," I said. "I'm sorry. You gonna be all right?"

"Oh, yeah. I think I know the next thing you're gonna ask, though."

"What's that?"

"Where Jack is."

"Oh." I looked past Trevor to Jack, who … wasn't there. "Gee, I didn't even notice he was gone. But, now that you've mentioned it, yeah, where is he?"

"Physical therapy. Should be back before long."

I nodded, deciding to straighten up Jack's area before he got back. Jack had suffered a leg injury in Vietnam – nothing too imminent, though apparently he'd come rather close to being an amputee – and he could walk now without artificial support, but there would always be a slight limp in his step.

While I straightened up I thought back over the past few months since I'd volunteered here, since I'd met Jack and Trevor. I wasn't going to say that they replaced Soda and Steve necessarily – they couldn't; that was impossible – but they'd sure become fast friends and an instant comfort to me. Half of the reason I came here now was so that I could hang around with them, and laugh at their silly jokes, and listen as they tried to explain war and everything that came with it.

I think Jack and I had become closer, too. We talked a lot, and we connected, and we understood one another. He was older than me, at least by a couple of years, but that didn't seem to bother him. Trevor liked to joke around and call us 'friends with benefits,' but nothing especially noteworthy had ever occurred between us. I knew when he was flirting with me, and I flirted right back, but that was about it.

"Jack was writing a letter home to his folks before he went to PT," Trevor told me.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. He left it out."

"So?"

"So, you should read it."

"Why would I read it? It's not any of my business."

He grinned. "Or is it?"

I rolled my eyes and continued what I was doing. But I thought it was real nice that Jack was able to correspond with his family this way. It was true, what I had learned at one point, that some of the guys around here didn't get any visitors or any mail, or anything like that, which was so incredibly sad. How could anybody be so heartless towards these men? They were injured and lonely and probably very homesick. It broke my heart to watch them suffer like that.

But Jack and his family wrote to one another religiously, or at least that's what I'd observed.

I couldn't help looking over his letter, though, despite my best intentions. It was right there in plain view. I decided that he was either not quite finished with it yet, or he was getting ready to send it. I knew him, though, and I knew that he usually didn't like sharing what he'd written with others, and because of this he wouldn't just leave that lying right there, where anybody could pick it up. He was always fearful of things falling into the wrong hands.

He'd written things that were basically the usual, things that probably every soldier wrote to their families – _I love you; I miss you; I can't wait until I can come home. _But my eyes fell upon one paragraph. It wasn't very long, but it had the desired effect.

… _And I've been talking to this chick here called Eleanor. She's a volunteer, and she's a real nice girl. We talk a lot and have a lot in common. And Mom, Dad, I think I might want to marry her one day. I'm serious. I think she might be _the one.

I smiled to myself and felt my heart skip a beat. I suppose I'd been a bit blind to the fact that the flirting had maybe meant something. I was about to go on to the next paragraph when I heard his voice behind me.

"Sneaking around in other people's business again, Eleanor?"

I turned around so quickly that I gave myself whiplash. He'd startled me. "Oh, no, I was just – "

"That's okay," he said. "I wanted you to read it."

"You did? Really?"

"What do you think I left it out there for?"

I looked over at Trevor. He just grinned and shook his head and looked away. "Well, I didn't … Are you really serious about that? About wanting to marry me?"

"One day," he said slowly, climbing back onto his bed, "when I get out of here, I might just want to do that. Besides, Trevor over here thinks we'd make a groovy couple. Isn't that right, Trev?"

Trevor nodded with an appreciative grin. "You'd have beautiful children."

"Well, that's all very flattering," I said, "but I've only known you for" – I stopped to count on my fingers – "two, three months now? And you're thinking about marriage?"

"I like to plan ahead."

"Either way, I'm too young to get married, anyway. And frankly, so are you."

"In some cultures, people get married when they're fourteen."

"Well, this is America," I said.

"In America some people get married when they're eighteen."

I wrinkled my nose. I knew he would say that. "That's beside the point. I'm touched that you feel that way about me, but it's just … it's too … I don't know. It just doesn't seem right."

"Because I'm injured?"

"_No. _Of course not."

"Yeah, that's why, isn't it?" he said, looking quite offended. "You're afraid."

"What do you mean? I don't have anything to be afraid of."

With his eyes he scaled the perimeter of the room. "Look around you, Eleanor. Look at us. What do you see?"

"I see a group of young men who went and fought because their country called them but came back just as confused as the rest of us." I hesitated. "Your injuries don't scare me. If they did, I wouldn't be here. I mean, for God's sake, Jack. My brother and my best friend are in Vietnam right now. I've known them for as long as I can remember. If one of them got their arm or leg blown off, do you think I'd be afraid?"

"Maybe."

"No. I wouldn't."

"Why are we arguing about this?"

"You started it," I said, and turned to walk away. I wasn't mad. But there were other things I had to do, and I didn't feel like arguing.

"Nora," he said suddenly. I stopped dead. Didn't turn around to face him, just stood there. "Nice nickname for Eleanor, wouldn't ya say?"

I turned around then, looking back and forth between him and Trevor, trying to mask my grief but not succeeding.

My father was the only person that ever called me Nora.

xxx

**VC: **Viet Cong  
**NVA: **North Vietnamese Army  
**R and R: **sometimes called rest and recreation, other times called rest and relaxation; basically, the same thing as leave, but in Vietnam they only went to other countries in the Southeast Asia region, never back to America  
**Boonies: **infantry term for the field, jungle, or swampy areas; sometimes used to describe any place in Vietnam  
**PX: **Post Exchange  
**GI: **Government Issue; basically another term for an infantry soldier  
**PT: **physical therapy

Lots of acronyms, eh?

Reviews are appreciated!


	20. Twenty

**A/N: **I think have writer's block. x.x

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders, _"Nature's Way," written by Randy California and performed by Spirit, or the altered sequence that I borrowed from the book, _Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, _by Ellen Emerson White.

---

**Chapter Twenty:**

" … _it's nature's way of telling you / something's wrong … "_

Jack regarded me carefully and with intense empathy, and I tried to find another focal point. "Did I say something wrong?"

I shook my head. "No," I told him. "It wasn't you. It's just … that's what my dad used to call me. Nora."

It hurt to say it myself, even. My father was the only one that called me that, ever. My mother never did. In fact, she never shortened my name. Once, not long after they'd died, Soda had slipped it by accident, and because I was still having a hard time with it all, I had chosen not to speak to him for the remainder of that day. I wasn't mad at him. It wasn't his fault. But hearing the name reminded me too much of my dad. It intensified the grief, almost.

"Is that a bad thing?" Jack wondered, still unaware, I realized.

"It's … it's not _bad, _it's just …" I hesitated, and then shook my head. He had a right to know. "My parents died two years ago," I told him. Had it really been two years already? "Since then it's just been me and my brothers. My dad used to call me Nora. It reminds me of him, that's all."

"Oh." He glanced over at Trevor, as if not sure what to say to me. I didn't know if I'd be so sure what to say to me either. "I'm sorry," he said at last. "I didn't know."

"I'm not mad."

He nodded. "I just thought it was a nice nickname. S'pose you don't want me calling you that, though."

I sighed and looked at the clock and decided to call it a day. It wasn't his fault. I wasn't blaming him. I turned back around to leave, but before I did, I said, "Y'know, the truth is … I don't know what I want anymore."

I didn't stick around long enough to wait for a reply, but the silence told me that there hadn't been one anyway. He must have thought that I was upset with him for calling me Nora, but he hadn't known, and I wasn't mad. Not at him.

I don't know what it was, but everything seemed so monotonous now. It had for a while. I thought maybe it was the weather, the constant gray chill that annually lasted well into mid-March. I really don't know. But even the salon and the VA had stunted my interest a bit and at dinner one night Darry commented on the fact that I seemed "distant."

Maybe I was. I felt that way sometimes. I'd never felt that way before, at least not when Soda and Steve had been around. I hated feeling that way, like I was somehow detached from the rest of the world, floating around somewhere out there. I think that their letters – the only reminders that they were still alive and safe, God willing – were really some of the only things that kept me relatively grounded. Discernibly, it didn't come anywhere close to talking to them in person, but it was something, at least.

March was okay. It wasn't as cold. When I wasn't working I hung around at home a lot more, though, and watched the television almost religiously. It never really left me with a better understanding of the war – in fact, often times I'd only end up more confused – but at least I could feel like I knew what was going on.

I think I lost that feeling, though, at the end of the month, when President Johnson announced – quite unexpectedly, too – that he would not be running for reelection. He said something like, "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president," and then I stood up and shut off the TV.

"What a coward," I remarked. "He tells us all about how bad the war is and then he completely cops out. Is that even the right thing to do? The whole country's watching and you just give up right in front of them?"

"Maybe he doesn't know what to do about the war anymore," Ponyboy suggested. "Maybe he wants to hand it over to somebody more experienced."

"Exactly," I said, and ambled off to my room to get ready for bed. "He's a coward."

And maybe that was true. But as I drifted off to sleep that night, the only thing I could seem to focus on was my hope that the next president to take over could end the war quick and get my best friends the hell out of there.

After that it looked as if the whole world was on edge, just waiting for something to happen. The way things had been going lately, everyone seemed to expect some sort of disturbance or uprising now. Maybe a riot in New York over civil rights or an anti-war sit-in gone awry in Los Angeles or even the controversial atomic bomb dropping over Hanoi that was always discussed but never actually happened. Who really knew?

It did, though – it happened. Hardly even a week later, and it was all over the newspapers – 'Civil Rights Leader Shot Dead in Memphis.' Then it showed the picture. You couldn't see Dr. King, really, or the blood, but there was a railing and a man pointing over it. I didn't think that April 4, 1968 was going to be soon forgotten by anybody.

I can't say that I remember exactly what I did that day – it wasn't like Kennedy. I know that I didn't really hear about it until long after getting home from school, and I don't know why, as they usually tell you about those things. But it was later that night when I found out, and I was in my room doing my homework, and Darry came in and showed me the newspaper. The heading and the photograph was a sufficient explanation; there was no real reason to have to read the article in its entirety, unless you wanted the details.

I got most of them that night on the news. It was so horrible and sad and wrong, and I didn't even know how to react to it. I don't even think I ever did react, really – I just sat there, stupefied.

And then as I lay in bed that night and talked it over with Ponyboy like we often did when stuff like this happened – assassinations and higher body counts and everything else that seemed as if it were becoming so commonplace – my general train of thought kept returning not to the fact that one of my heroes, one of America's greatest civil rights leaders, had died that day, but to the fact that Soda and Steve only had about four months left in-country. And I don't know why, because taking into consideration the circumstances of the day's occurrences, thinking about that seemed so _wrong. _

I had the VA the following afternoon, though I didn't think they would have wanted me to come in at all, as the previous day's events had left the whole of America, seemingly, completely shaken. But I did anyway. I needed something to do, something to keep my mind off of the fact that the world was unraveling at our fingertips.

In the lobby, I passed by the front office where Maureen sat, back now after having had her baby. She looked stricken. I didn't think anything of it; everyone was still in remorse and shock over all that had happened yesterday. Riots had started all over. They talked about them on the news, and apparently, they were real bad.

I almost expected the usual chaos and cacophony that came with the soldiers in my ward, but when I got down there it was dead silent. No music, no talking, no laughter. It was weird. Most of them were lying in their beds with their backs turned, and I looked across the room at Jack and Trevor, who were just as silent and still as the rest of them. Hollywood's bed was empty. Knowing I was there, Lieutenant Ferguson appeared from a nearby office and pulled me aside.

"What's going on?" I demanded. "Why is it so quiet?"

"It happened this morning," she said shakily. "The sergeant, Ray Butterfield …"

"Who?"

"Hollywood."

I felt my stomach sink. I already knew. Except for the details. "What happened to him?"

"It was an embolism. It happens a lot with paralysis patients." That's right. Hollywood had been paralyzed from the waist down. "It wasn't five minutes before we got a doctor up here, but he …" She sighed heavily, letting the rest hang.

I was nearly speechless. "Should I – "

She placed a hand on my shoulder. "Tomorrow," she promised. "Okay?"

I nodded, and when she walked off again, I went into the room and walked over to Jack.

"Hi," I said quietly. He didn't reply. I sat down on Hollywood's bed, made up neatly and awaiting the next patient, and then felt really strange about it, and stood back up. "I'm so sorry," I went on. Still no reply. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

This time he shook his head.

"Do you want me to leave?"

No answer. I waited, and after a moment he held out his hand. I don't know what he wanted, but I took a shot and stepped closer to the edge of his bed, and tentatively, he closed his fingers around mine and held onto my hand for a long time. We didn't talk. There was no need for it. I understood his grief and he understood my confusion.

And we were both aware of the same thing: Hollywood had survived fighting in a war, he had survived paralysis – and he had died because of a tiny, freak accident inside one of his veins.

But if you ask me, _Vietnam _is what killed him. And I just couldn't grasp the unmerited wrongness of it all.

I left after a while. There was nothing for me to do there. And Jack hadn't said a word at all; he just held onto my hand. Right before I went to leave, he gave it a squeeze and then a tug, so I stayed behind a minute, and he reached over and picked up his dog tags and placed them in my hand and closed my fingers around them, slowly, never speaking a word.

It had meant something. I wasn't sure what, exactly, but it had, and I knew it.

When I got home, Darry asked me what was wrong – my brothers could usually tell when something abnormal was up with me – but I insisted I was fine and went to take a shower. At dinner, though, for some reason, I felt compelled to tell him and Ponyboy all about the VA and everyone there, and I did. I told them about Jack and Trevor and Hollywood, and how he had died today and I'd never known his real name was Ray Butterfield, or that he was a sergeant, and about the kid whose leg was in traction and how they always had to bring their card games to him.

I told them about the chaos and the rowdiness, and Maureen and Lieutenant Ferguson, the man with the three fingers, and the paintings on the wall.

When I was finished, though, I realized I had told them more about Jack than I had originally intended. The only part I left out was the part about the dog tags. And that he had called me Nora, oblivious, of course, to the effect that it would have on me. But I must have dropped enough hints because Darry looked suspicious, and rather displeased.

"You like this guy?" he said sharply, and I noticed he seemed to be abstaining from saying 'Jack.' Like it was poison.

"I like him," I said slowly, "as my friend."

"He seems to like _you _a lot."

"I guess, maybe," I replied, thinking of the dog tags. They were in the drawer in my bedside table, and there they would stay until I figured out exactly what his intentions were for giving them to me.

With the exception of silverware and glasses, there was complete silence for a moment or two, before Darry continued with, "Well? Is he serious?"

I looked up and glanced over at Ponyboy, but he only shrugged. "Serious? About what?"

He looked at me as if I should have known right off the bat what he meant. "About you."

xxx

**April 4, 1968: **if you didn't catch on, this is the date that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee

**A/N: **Sorry if this chapter was a little fast-paced. Happens a lot when I have writer's block and/or can't find time to write. Usually results in extreme aggravation.

Reviews are appreciated!


	21. Twenty One

**A/N: **Okay, apparently I suck at updating. I won't even waste time with a dumb author's note. I'll just say thanks for waiting so patiently. Psh, this chapter took me nearly a month and it's not even that good …

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders, _"Flaming," written by Syd Barrett and performed by Pink Floyd, "Today," written by Marty Balin and Paul Kantner, or "Somebody to Love," written by Darby Slick, both performed by Jefferson Airplane.

---

**Chapter Twenty-One:**

" … _screaming through the starlit sky, traveling by telephone / hey ho, here we go, ever so high … "_

I think there are certain moments in your life when things come at you so quickly, and so unexpectedly, that you realize your head is still spinning days afterwards. It's kind of like a baseball. You're so sure you see it coming – I mean, it's right there; you could easily reach out and grab it – but then it just hauls off and hits you in the face.

That's what the first week of June was like, and maybe it remained that way long afterwards. I don't know.

But a lot of things changed that week, including myself. First cause? Barbara Callahan. In a mere matter of months she had gone from refined and religion-based to peace-waging hippie chick whom at this point belonged on Haight-Ashbury more than I did. Apparently, her cousin up at Khe Sanh had died there from a shrapnel wound he sustained shortly after the siege had ended, and Barbara claimed that this had "transformed her," that she "wasn't the same person that she used to be," and she spoke often of world peace and an end to poverty, among other intangibles.

Sometimes I'm not so sure she cared one way or the other. Sometimes I think she turned into the person she did because it was 1968, because it was en vogue, and because America was, after all, a free country. She was all about that, too: freedom. It was a great thing to have, I thought, but taking it too far always seemed to have a negative effect on society, and I don't think she realized that.

When I didn't have work or the VA, Barbara came over and we hung around in my bedroom, escaping the heat. Sometimes I went over to her house. She was a middle classer and it seemed as if her part of town wasn't nearly as involved in the gang rivalry as ours was, though things had calmed down more than ever now that the war and civil rights had more than captured the public's attention. It almost didn't seem important anymore, and I hadn't noticed any disturbances lately. Barbara didn't seem to care.

She'd never smoked before. I did, once in a while, and one time she asked me if she could have "a hit," as she put it. I said sure, and when I gave her the cigarette she inhaled deeply and promptly started coughing. I didn't laugh at her like most people would, and it didn't take her long to figure it out on her own, anyway.

She wasn't the same after that. I think she may have discovered the world of psychedelic drugs, thus becoming a loyal follower. And one day she asked me, out of the blue, if I'd ever done any myself.

"My brothers would murder me," I replied with a nervous laugh, unsure about where this conversation was going.

"They wouldn't if they never found out about it," she said. I frowned. It was June fourth and sweltering outside, and even the cool comfort of my room wasn't helping much. Barbara had a glass of lemonade and she dropped something into it, swirled it around a few times, and then took a generous sip.

"What was that?" I wondered.

She smiled evasively, staring at the glass, her eyes cloudy and unreadable. Then she looked up at me. "Lucy in the sky with diamonds."

For a moment my brain seemed to go numb. LSD. "Barbara … you're not actually gonna take that, are you?"

"Too late." She leaned back against a nearby wall, waiting for the drug to take over. "Looks like I already did."

"I thought your parents were missionaries."

She laughed bitterly. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Well … wouldn't they have taught you not to take drugs?"

"Eleanor." She dropped the same cubic object into my own lemonade. "This is 1968. Everyone's taking acid trips. Stop being a sissy and try it. One time? It isn't going to kill you."

"Then what is it going to do?"

"You're not gonna find out unless you try it."

"I don't wanna find out at all," I said to her. "I should just go dump this down the sink."

"And then what? Leave me to trip out alone? Okay, Eleanor. Some friend you are."

"Look, I just don't want to – " She didn't hear me, or didn't seem to hear me. I could tell that the LSD was already beginning to have an effect on her. She didn't even look to be upset anymore, as far as I could tell. I watched her as she twirled around the room a few times, humming some incoherent little melody to herself, before collapsing flat on her back on the floor, giggling uncontrollably. She asked me if I'd "seen that."

"Seen what?" I replied.

"It's like the room is spinning and I'm making it spin," she said slowly, unaware of anything remotely real and tangible. "Eleanor, you have to try this! Really!"

I looked down at my glass, curious. I knew about this stuff, this LSD. I knew what it did to you, and that some people claimed they were never the same afterwards, and I didn't want to have to be changed for life because of some stupid drug. But it was killing me to know what it was like, to know what was so great about it and why Barbara seemed to enjoy it so much. Why _everybody _seemed to enjoy it so much.

I couldn't do it, but I could. It was so easy. All of the bad things in life were so easy. Child's play. And it wouldn't last long, would it? It would wear off in a couple of minutes. I felt sure of it. And before I could dissuade myself anymore, I took a long drink from the lemonade glass, put a record on the turntable without identifying which one it was, and then waited. Just waited.

It wasn't long before my heart rate began to increase considerably. My forehead and my palms were perspiring, too, and that's when I began to get nervous. Barbara was still on the floor, giggling away and chattering on about how she was hearing colors and seeing sounds, and I shook my head at her nonsense but quickly found I was experiencing the exact same thing.

It scared me to death and I couldn't escape it. I felt so disoriented now and I was seeing things everywhere. There was no black and white anymore; the world was a full spectrum of colors and everything seemed alive. Awake.

I left the room and stepped outside and the sky looked pink, then green, and yellow, and then orange, and then back to pink. It kept alternating, and the atmosphere was warmer too. My heart raced. My mouth went dry. It didn't occur to me until later but at that moment I was tripping. Dropping acid. It was something I had never done before, something I had never planned on doing. But there I was anyway.

Out of fear and pure anxiety I whimpered and ran back inside, where Barbara was busy "talking" to my bedside table, completely unaware of the fact that it was an inanimate object. With it, she was discussing the meaning of life. And she kept on giggling, nonstop, and when she saw me, she forgot all about the table and took my hands and danced me around the room, and everything blurred together. A million colors, a million sounds—my room was an electric rainbow.

"I told you it'd be a mind-blower!" she sing-songed.

Oh, it was a mind-blower, all right.

"I think I'm going out of my head," I told her. I'm not kidding—the whole room was an assorted mix of colors and sounds and all sorts of crazy things you'd never see in reality. It was terrifying and beautiful at the very same time. "Like, day and night, night and day and night going out of my head."

She giggled even more, and after an unsuccessful attempt to brace myself against the wall, I passed out—slowly, of course. Everything faded slowly. I'd never done drugs—half the time I didn't even consider cigarettes a drug. This was so new to me; my body certainly wasn't used to it. And I would never drop acid again, not for all of the money in the world.

When I awoke it was nightfall. The room smelled strongly of incense and cigarette smoke, and the record player was still going softly. My head continued to spin and I felt slightly nauseous. The air was cool against my skin, which seemed to vibrate still, and I wondered if the window was open. Things were coming back to me in slow, throbbing waves, and I had to cover my eyes with my hand. The music was giving me the most uncomfortable headache, but at the same time it was soothing and daydream-inducing and I found myself drawn to it. It sounded like ... I knew the song title. I knew it. I just wished I could remember the band, even though I knew that too ...

_today, you're making me say that I somehow have changed  
today, you look into my eyes, I'm just not the same_

It hurt my head to try and concentrate, and I groaned and rolled over, realizing I had somehow ended up in my bed. My sense of reality was returning to me now, and I found myself thinking about … God, where had my brothers been while we were tripping? I knew Darry was at work, but Ponyboy was at home. I had a feeling he'd seen the whole thing, or part of it, and decided not to say anything. I just wanted to forget about it now and I hoped he would, too. The last thing I needed at this point was for Darry to find out that I'd had my first real experience with the Sixties. That wouldn't go over too well.

I gave myself as long as I thought I needed to recover, which turned out to be about a day, and even then, the stuff still hadn't worn off completely. My brothers seemed to believe that I was simply ill, and I played along as if that really were the case. I hated lying about it, but I wasn't about to tell them what I'd really been up to all day.

On the afternoon of the sixth, when I stopped seeing things that weren't supposed to be there and mumbling incoherently about colored skies, I declared myself fully recovered. I went to work refreshed and then spent a good portion of my afternoon at the VA. I suspected Jack must have been in a fairly good mood, and himself recovered from the news of Hollywood, for he was flirting with me a lot more than usual. But I wasn't complaining.

After a quick detour to the library, I walked home because it was summer and daylight lasted longer, but it was only then that I got wind of the recent events I had been heretofore oblivious to. Next to a little café there was a television and radio store with about four or five black-and-white TVs stacked up on shelves in the window, a few people gathered around and peering inside.

Senator Kennedy was shown speaking and the people standing at the window watching looked stricken and sad. I couldn't figure it out for a minute, and I asked what was wrong, and some woman told me that he'd been shot and killed the night before, just moments after winning the California primary.

I turned away from the television in the window and looked out at the street in disbelief. This wasn't real. This wasn't right. This hadn't really happened. Not again. I walked in the direction of my house and left my books where I had dropped them, out of shock, on the building's front steps. I didn't want them anymore.

xxx

I was in a daze for the rest of the afternoon and some of the evening, trying to make sense of all that had happened in such a short period of time. What had gone wrong? Who were we supposed to rely on now?

Senator Kennedy and Dr. King had been assassinated within two months of each other. Everything about that was so wrong.

And what was happening to America? Everything was crazy and evil and nothing seemed right anymore. The Kennedy brothers were gone and they'd taken the innocence with them. All they'd wanted was peace. The three of them … John and Bobby and Dr. King, they'd just been trying to spread peace and make the world a better place for people to live in, and for that three other sick, twisted people wanted them dead. It made me feel very afraid, and no longer secure.

And for a long time that night – it must have been the first time in months – I seemed to forget all about Soda and Steve, which was odd for me, seeing as I thought about them every day, and what they were doing, and if they were okay. But with all that had happened … I just wasn't thinking about them. Simple as that. And I wasn't worried about them, either. The only thing I was worried about was where our country was going from here.

I sat outside on the front porch for a long time and contemplated that. The night air was warm and the breeze humid, and the television inside competed with some upbeat tune on the radio, although I couldn't seem to find any comfort in happy music at a time like this. Who could? Maybe some people, like the ones who were experts at pretending Vietnam didn't exist, but not me. It was too real.

I sat there on the porch with a cigarette between my fingers and watched the stars twinkle above me, which only reminded me of a night one year before, about the same time in June, when Soda and I had sat out on the hood of the car together and talked for at least an hour. It only made me miss them and think about them even more, but then I felt bad for not thinking about the recent events regarding Senator Kennedy. It was a vicious cycle, and my eyes filled up with tears as I realized how dumb I was being.

My vision blurred for a moment and I bent my head to wipe my eyes, and while doing so heard, "Are you crying?"

I looked up, startled and a bit shaken. It was Two-Bit.

"No," I said defensively. My voice shook slightly. I thought he'd been out with Kathy. Or maybe not, but I surely hadn't expected him here. "My eyes just don't handle cigarette smoke too well, that's all."

"Oh. Well, all right." I could tell he didn't believe me, but he didn't force me to talk about it anymore beyond that. He was smarter than most people gave him credit for, I think. "You okay, then?"

I shrugged and he took a seat on the step beside me. "I don't know. I guess."

I could still hear the radio going inside. _"When the garden flowers, they are dead, yes, and your mind, your mind is so full of red …" _I shivered, for the last bit had reminded me of my LSD trip with Barbara, something I just wanted to forget about completely now.

"How's the VA? I bet you were pretty glad Darry let you do it."

I nodded. I thought about Jack and the dog tags and my heart fluttered. I wasn't going to tell him about Jack just yet, or even Trevor, but any mention of the VA prompted the fleeting palpitations I had become all too familiar with lately. "Yeah. It's all right. I like it there. Kind of a release, you know?"

"Sure," he said, but looked puzzled.

"What?"

"I just don't get that about you."

"Get what?"

"I don't know how to say it … well, you're against the war, right? And you're upset about Steve and Sodapop being over there. But then every week you're around guys who were there, and you watch it on the news and talk about it a lot. What's up with that? It's like two different things … do you know what I'm trying to say?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I get it. You're saying I'm a hypocrite, right?"

"Is that the word for it?"

"I think so."

"Well, then, yeah. That's what I'm saying."

I smiled. "I guess maybe a little. Not all of it, though. It's something I'm interested in – the controversy, I guess. I hate it all, but I love learning about it. And maybe that does make me a hypocrite, but I think there are worse things you could call somebody."

"Eleanor, you're a mess. You know that?"

"Excuse me?"

"Ever since Soda and Steve left – you're not yourself. You're a big mess."

"Well, I think I have every right to be. They're my best friends. You know what I mean, right? You've been around them as long as I have. How do you think _you'd _feel?"

He didn't answer, just stared at me for a moment and then shook his head, making sure to remind me again that I was, according to him, a mess. And perhaps I was. It only got me to thinking about what a bigger mess I'd be if I never saw one or both of them again. I didn't even want to picture that. I couldn't, and I wasn't going to.

I thought again about the whole hypocrite thing. It didn't bother me, that he'd made that observation, but I needed something else to think about besides fate.

Aside from actually being labeled a hypocrite, I'd also been called a war lover, and "as bad as the soldiers themselves," by some kids at school, simply because of the fact that I'd volunteered at the VA hospital. Apparently, word had gotten round.

I knew the war was unpopular, but that was taking it too far. That was like pointedly blaming Soda and Steve, and their friend Gardner who'd gotten killed, and Jack and Trevor and Hollywood. It wasn't the soldiers' faults. They hadn't started the war. And yet they were being hated for it anyway, blamed as if they really were the reason America was involved, receiving no fanfare or welcome upon their return to the United States like in World War II.

The war was getting bad. No, that was wrong – it _was _bad. Undeniably bad. People needed something to hate because of it. But hating our fighting forces for doing something that the majority of them didn't even believe was the right thing to do?

That was ridiculous.

xxx

**A/N: **See? I told you it wasn't that good. I tried to write her LSD experience as realistically as I could. I've done the research—despite the fact that I would never do them myself, I have a bit of an interest in learning about drugs already—but obviously having never experienced something like that firsthand, or really seen it except for television, it was a little difficult to make it exactly spot on. Like I said, though, I think I did the best that I could. If there's anything that I should fix, or anything that doesn't sound right or sounds off to you, please, let me know. :)

Also, the reason that I chose the song "Flaming" to precede this chapter is due to a sensation you feel when you're tripping that makes everything look or seem as if it is on fire. I have no idea if this song was written based on an acid trip, during an acid trip, or what—though by reading the lyrics, one would wonder—but that's what I have read and I thought that it seemed fitting. (It's also a lovely song.)

Reviews are appreciated!


	22. Twenty Two

**A/N: **I don't know if it's just the current situation in my life right about now, or something else, but I managed to finish this chapter today and yesterday. I was quite proud of myself. I didn't intend for it to be quite this long, though. o.O

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders, _"That's the Way," written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, and performed by Led Zeppelin, or the letter that I borrowed from the book, _Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam._

---

**Chapter Twenty-Two:**

" … _and yesterday I saw you standing by the river, and weren't those tears that filled your eyes / and all the fish that lay in dirty water dying, had they got you hypnotized? … "_

Thursday afternoon when I walked into my ward at the VA, the first thing that Jack said to me was, "Hey, do you wanna take a walk with me?"

I frowned and looked over at Trevor, who was asleep. "Excuse me?"

"A walk," Jack repeated. "You know, around the halls? Maybe outside a little? I wanted to show you something anyway. Ferguson said we could."

"Are you sure? I mean, can you move around okay?"

"Course I can. I mean, except for the limp, but that'll always be there. Nothing I can do about it. But walking's good for muscle strength. You know? I need it."

"So, why do I have to come? I already come here two days a week for a reason, and it's not to walk aimlessly around the building."

He looked offended, but only mildly so, and the smirk on his face suggested he was probably more amused than anything else. "Ferguson said we could," he told me slowly, as if I hadn't understood him the first time. "Besides, I told you I had to show you something, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but … I don't …" I shifted my weight from one foot to the other nervously. "Fine. Let's go, then."

Once we were out in the hallway, which seemed more narrow now that I wasn't the only person occupying it, Jack picked up my hand tentatively and held onto it. He seemed to be waiting for me to protest, but I didn't, and so he relaxed a bit. "So," he said. "We're alone."

"We are," I replied matter-of-factly. "What are you showing me, anyway?"

"You'll see." There was a playful, mysterious tone about his voice, and he smiled down at me. I returned it with a blush, and looked away.

"Will I like it?" I prodded.

"Do you like flowers? And fresh air?"

"Sure," I said. "Who doesn't?"

He nodded. "Then, yeah. You'll like it."

"That's all you're gonna tell me?"

"We're just going outside," he said plainly. "What more do you want to know?"

"Well, if that's what you were planning on 'showing me,' then nothing. You're not very good at keeping things a secret for too long, Jack. You know that, right?"

"Yeah. I'm surprised I even made it as a platoon lieutenant, too, 'cause that's the kinda stuff that gets you killed in the field. There were lots of times I almost gave away our position." His voice grew somber then, and his face serious. "My fault, too. And if it hadn't been for me … Tella would have lived."

We came outside, where the air was fresh and smelled of magnolias. Whoever took care of the land around the building did a fairly good job of it, for there were lots of flowers in full bloom, and a whole bunch of green plants. It looked like a nice place to just sit and think. There was a man in a wheelchair nearby doing just that, or what looked to be, and he had a little radio on the table next to him, and he was gazing up at the sky. I didn't pay attention for too long though, because what Jack was telling me was more important.

"Who was that?"

"One of my best friends over there," he explained. "I know it was my fault he got killed. I've been blaming myself for it ever since it happened."

"Why? It couldn't have been your fault."

"But it was," he countered. "It really was. We were on patrol and he was on point, and I thought I noticed something – a concealed mine, maybe – that he was about to step on, and … I told him from where I was to watch out, or step back, or something, and he did. But I yelled too loud and whoever was there came out from where they were hiding, and that was it. We got engaged in this massive firefight and Tella got hit first." He shook his head and sat down on a bench. "I don't know why they didn't take a shot at me before they did him. I was the one who yelled."

"Where'd he get hit? I mean … could he have been saved?"

"The first time, maybe."

I swallowed hard. "The first time?"

"They got him in the helmet first. Bullet kinda bounced off. If he had just left it on and gotten down, he would have been fine. But he took it off to see what had hit him and they shot him right through the middle of his forehead. He was dead before he hit the ground."

I winced at the thought of it. What an absolutely terrible way to die. "So … it wasn't your fault, then. It was his."

"It was my fault they heard us."

"But he would have died anyway, Jack. If you hadn't yelled he would have stepped on that mine."

"Yeah, but that's the thing. There was no mine. It was nothing. I was seeing things. A mirage."

"Oh," I replied softly. What more could I say? I still didn't believe it was his fault, but … all I could think about was the trickery of war, and how simply it could mess you up just by seeing something that wasn't really there. It scared me. It scared the hell out of me. What if something like that happened to Soda or Steve?

"Come on," I said at last. "Maybe we should walk around again. Muscle strength, remember?"

Jack hesitated briefly, and then nodded. "Yeah."

When he stood I noticed the slight limp in his step for the first time. It had always been there, but now was the first time I really became aware of it. I felt sorry for him, but it was more than that. I don't know what I felt. But I recognized the emptiness again. It came more frequently now.

We walked for a long time, not really speaking to each other that much. Just reflecting. We both hoped for a more promising future, one with less heartbreak and disappointment. In different respects, we had both grown up the hard way. We couldn't change that.

The man in the wheelchair – a World War I veteran, I gathered – sat watching us with a heavy gaze as we would periodically pass by him. He looked tired and drawn, and his skin was a pallid, yellowish absence of color. I noticed after a while that he was counting how many times we walked by.

"That man," I said to Jack. "He looks kind of disturbed, doesn't he?"

Jack sighed. "We're all disturbed somehow, Eleanor. Even you. It just affects people differently, that's all. And they express it differently, too. Like him." He nodded to the man. "He can't help it. Some people can control it. You and I can do that. So can Trevor."

I nodded and thought about that. He was right. Trevor had seen himself almost get blown to pieces, yet he still maintained a positive attitude about his life and his situation. So did Jack, though he was often times less comic than Trevor, and more solemn. I thought about what Soda and Steve had to see on a daily basis and wondered how they could stand it. How many friends and comrades had they seen die out there? How many times had they felt the guilt over knowing they'd just killed somebody for something that would never count for anything in the future? If I were in their position, I was sure I'd go insane. I wouldn't be able to handle it; the insanity and chaos alone would break me before the guns ever came close.

"He keeps staring," I said quietly. "Maybe we should go in."

Jack shook his head and took my hand carefully, walking closer to the man. "Mister?" he said. "Are you all right?"

The man's eyes clouded over a bit and he pointed a crooked, shaky finger at me. "Bridget," he said, his voice gravelly and old. Jack and I glanced at each other tersely. "My daughter, Bridget. You're her, aren't you?"

"No," I said slowly. "I'm sorry. You must have me confused. My name's Eleanor."

"Do you know her? My Bridget?" the man asked. His whole hand shook now, and I could tell he feared the answer. Something traumatic, maybe even tragic, had happened to him, and it had concerned this Bridget, his daughter.

"I don't," I told him. "I'm sorry. I don't know anybody named Bridget."

Jack squeezed my hand, trying to encourage me to let the matter drop. "Don't upset him anymore," he told me, very quietly. "I remember hearing about this. I'll tell you about it."

I nodded and followed him back over to the bench we had been sitting at before. The man didn't even bother turning around to see where we had gone. In fact, he seemed to forget all about it, and his gaze returned to the sky and the clouds and the heavens.

"His name is Eddie," Jack explained. "I don't know his last name. This is just what I've heard from the nurses." He took my hand again, and looked into my eyes, and I recognized that studious gaze of his from my first day at the VA. "He fought in World War I. Few years after he came back, he married a woman named Margaret. Apparently he called her Meg. In the early part of the Depression, they had two kids – a girl and a boy. The boy's name was James and the girl's, well, Bridget. They had very little money and Eddie was unemployed."

He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. I nodded, urging him to continue.

"James was older than Bridget by a year or two. In the mid-Thirties, Bridget developed pneumonia, and … she died. They didn't have the money to get her treated, although they tried. She was only three."

"Oh, my gosh," I gasped. "That's terrible. I can't even imagine … But how could he compare us? She was three and I'm seventeen now. How did he possibly find any similarity?"

Jack shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you had the same hair color, or something. I don't know." He shook his head. "Wars do things to you, Eleanor. You know that. Who knows what the long-term effects of fighting are making him see? Or not see, I guess."

"I'm sorry, Jack," I said quietly.

"For what?"

"For what you've had to go through. All of you. It isn't fair. It's not worth dying for." I found myself fighting back tears. I'd been doing that a lot more often lately. "I mean, when I think about my brother and Steve, and what could happen to them … it just isn't worth it. If something happens to them, what's it going to count for, you know? Nothing."

"That's not true."

"It is true, because it's not going to prove anything in the end. It really isn't. I don't care how many more boys they send over there each week, or each day. It's just not worth – "

Before I could finish he was kissing me, much to my surprise and alarm, and strangely, relief. I hadn't expected it, though, and instinctively, I pulled back and stared at him for a moment, completely shocked.

"Are you … was that … what did you do that for?"

"How else was I supposed to get you to quit babbling?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Tell me to shut up already?"

"I thought I'd try a nicer approach."

"I guess you did." I looked at him intently for a moment. "Really, why did you do that?"

"You needed it. And I wanted to. And I thought, 'Well, Pace, it's now or never.' So I chose now. I'm sorry if I startled you. I don't think that was my aim."

"Okay," I said.

"'Okay'? That's all you have to say about it? Just 'okay'?"

"Were you expecting me to say something different?"

"I think so. Yeah."

"Like what?" I said. "That I liked it? That I wouldn't mind if you kissed me again? Because I did, and I wouldn't."

He smirked. "Why don't I believe you? You looked pretty shocked there for a minute."

"Well, Jack, it was a rather shocking experience, I can tell you that, because it was the last thing I expected while I was busy pouring out my emotions. You know? So yeah, you're right. I was pretty shocked there for a minute."

"You don't seem so shocked anymore," he observed. "Shall we try again? Take two?"

"This isn't a movie."

"Feels like one, though, doesn't it?" he said, leaning in close again. "Things just get kinda surreal sometimes, don't they?"

"I don't know about that," I replied quietly. "Movies are movies. This is reality. Right? Or am I just finally losing it?"

"Guess we'll find out," he said, and then he was kissing me again, except this time it was slow and sweet and comfortable, and I actually found myself relaxing, really relaxing, for the first time in months. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe I really did need this. Or maybe I just needed him.

Afterwards I wondered what it meant, not only for us, but in general. And what would my brothers think? No way was I going to tell them, but I was sure they'd notice some sort of difference in me, if any, and if they did, what was I supposed to say?

It was a lovely, confusing feeling. And on the way home, I thought about it, and I tried to decide if I was in love with Jack or not. Part of me said I was, but the other part told me not to take any chances. He was older. He'd fought in a war. Two black marks against a developing relationship already. I guess it made me a little skeptical.

When I got home Darry told me I had another letter from Soda and Steve, and I felt a little twinge of relief; I knew they were okay. It was the first thing that came to my mind with each letter: they were alive, they were all right.

But when I read the letter I realized their situation was all wrong. It was no doubt the war had taken its toll on them, maybe even as early as their first month in-country, but now it was really beginning to show. My brother never spoke much about what it was really like for them before, except to say he hated it and wanted to come home, and I wondered now if they were just finally beginning to lose it.

_July 18, 1968_

_Eleanor,_

_What can I say to fill the void? I know letters are appropriate but it's hardly enough. I'm sick physically and mentally, I smoke too much, am constantly coughing, never eat, always sit around in a daze. All of us are in this general condition. We're all afraid to die, and all we can do is count the days 'til we go home._

_We're all in desperate need of love. When we go to Saigon, we spend all our money on women and beer. Some nights I don't sleep; I can't stand being alone at night. The guns don't bother me – I can't hear them anymore. I want to hold my head between my hands and run screaming away from here. I cry too, not much, just when I touch the sore spots._

_I'm hollow, El. I'm a shell, and when I'm scared I rattle. I'm no one to tell you about the horrors of this place. I can't. I'm sorry._

_Sodapop_

Steve didn't add anything this time, but in a way, I hadn't expected him to. I wasn't ignorant enough to believe that all of this hadn't changed him, either, and maybe there was nothing he could say. Or nothing he wanted to say. I didn't blame him.

The letter left me feeling sick and despaired, though, and prompted me to want to get out of the house for a little while and sort my thoughts. I'd been gone for most of the afternoon already, at the VA, but at home I felt helpless, and kind of lost, and didn't really know what to do with myself.

So I drove down to the river and walked along the beach for a while, listening to the water and the night. The stars were out, and the moon was nearly full, and the temperature was warm and pleasant. Not too humid, just kind of right in the middle. Strange for July; it was usually more unbearable than this. The sun had gone down by now, though. All that was left of it was a hazy pinkish outline along the western horizon, and as it rose on the opposite side of the world, I wondered what Soda and Steve were doing. Maybe they were getting ready to go out on patrol, or maybe they had been on one all night long and were just now sitting down to relax and recover. I wondered if they were scared, or if they had become seasoned to the point of not feeling any fear at all.

Though judging by Soda's letter, I had my doubts about that.

I allowed the water to lap up around my ankles, and I pulled a cigarette out of my pocket and lit up. It calmed my nerves a little bit. A breeze picked up and my hair curled and curved around my shoulders and upper arms like tongues of fire, and I pulled it off my neck and tied it back in a low ponytail before spotting, in the near distance, the sign we'd made five years ago, distinguishing our 'spot' from all the other places on the beach.

It was hard for me to believe that five years had passed since then, and I smiled sadly, remembering.

I walked over to the sign and sat down beside it, studying it carefully, as if it held all the answers. It was still perfectly intact, the handwriting clear, but the wood seemed to be rotting a bit. It didn't surprise me; the elements could do a lot in five years. I ran my hand along the surface of it, and in spite of myself I allowed a single tear to slide down my cheek. Another one followed, and then another, and when I moved to wipe them away I discovered a splinter lodged in the palm of my hand, which only made the urge to cry even stronger.

It wasn't the pain the splinter induced so much as the memories it brought back. I got a splinter in roughly the same place the day we made that sign, except it was a bigger splinter and much more painful, and I had begun to cry when I realized I couldn't get it out myself without making it worse. But Soda helped me, and he got it out, though it hurt a lot, and the skin had turned bright red around the nearly microscopic puncture, and it was then I discovered that I was afraid of pain. All kinds, physical and emotional alike. I was scared to death of it, from that point forward, and it wouldn't ever go away. It became my biggest fear. Even now, I steer clear of it whenever I'm able to, but lately I haven't been so fortunate in that respect.

After a long time of just sitting and reflecting and thinking and praying, I stood up and brushed myself off and started for home. It was getting late, and I was tired.

I was tired of everything, in general, and I was aching for it all to be over.

xxx

**A/N: **This really was not my favorite chapter. But it was all right, I guess. (Oh, by the way, the last name Tella is from the movie _The Thin Red Line, _great movie by the way, and I just thought it was a cool last name in general.) And I'll have Chapter Twenty-Three along as soon as I can. We'll see how that goes … it's going to be a tough one to write …

Reviews are appreciated!


	23. Twenty Three

**A/N: **I'm sorry for the delay. Some really bad stuff came up – my grandma died on the eleventh from complications with surgery and her health and age, and developed a serious infection called septicemia … she died before they had the chance to put her on a dialysis … – and so needless to say March was a really terrible month for me. I guess there's really no need to apologize, but whatever …

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "The End," written by Jim Morrison and performed by The Doors.

---

**Chapter Twenty-Three:**

" … _the end, of our elaborate plans, the end / of everything that stands, the end … "_

The rest of the summer seemed to pass by like some sort of dream. It was quick but enjoyable, and most of my days were spent at the salon or at the VA or simply at home. The last few weeks before school started again I'd been spending a lot more time there than usual, and I wasn't sure why. But I knew my brothers enjoyed my company, and so I tried to stick around more often when I wasn't busy with my "extracurriculars."

There were some days when I didn't even bother going to the VA. It was only a volunteer program, and I wasn't getting paid, and I didn't always feel like going, anyway, despite Jack and our developing relationship. I did that one Thursday afternoon in early September. It was very warm out – felt more like mid-August, really – and I took my time walking home from school. In fact, I didn't even go right home. I'm not sure why, but I took a long detour to the movie theater and saw an afternoon matinee. _Valley of the Dolls _was showing and I'd been wanting to see it since it came out almost a year before.

It wasn't just because I'd read the book, and loved it, but also because Sharon Tate played one of the main characters, and she'd always been one of my favorite actresses. As I walked home afterwards I realized Patty Duke was in it, too, but she wasn't of much interest to me. I'd watched _The Patty Duke Show _a couple of times with Mama when I was younger but was never terribly interested in it – there was just something rather disturbing to me about cousins being twins, and I didn't like that.

I'm still not so sure why I bothered with the movie, but it was a nice little release, and when I got home, the house was empty, which surprised me. It was five o'clock, at least. I wondered if maybe Darry had gotten held up at work, which happened once in a while, but I couldn't figure out where in the world Ponyboy could have been. And then I remembered he'd stayed after school to retake some test because he'd missed the day before.

I seemed to be forgetting things more often than I used to. And I was always getting sidetracked. I even forgot to look through the mail that day, which in all honesty had become about as close to ritual as you could get without becoming obsessive-compulsive. My hands shook slightly when I took it out of the mailbox and half of it slid through my fingers and onto the sidewalk. I cursed myself for being so clumsy, and once inside I set it down on the kitchen table, where it was promptly neglected.

I sat down on the couch and put my feet up and tried to work on some homework for a while, which worked for about a half an hour, but my focus was veering off in other directions, despite my best intentions.

"This is stupid," I said aloud, speaking to nobody except myself and Inka, who had curled up beside me and was purring contentedly. I slammed my physics book shut and tossed it haphazardly onto the coffee table. Thick as it was, the table rattled and groaned under its weight. "Why am I even bothering to concentrate?"

Inka only blinked once, and then bent her head to clean her paw. Eventually she decided it wasn't just her paw that needed cleaning, and she jumped down off of the couch and onto the floor to conduct a more thorough bath. I got to my feet myself, with some effort because I really didn't feel much like getting up, and went into the kitchen for a glass of lemonade, no Lucy this time, and tried to find something to do with myself. I felt bored and anxious.

It was then that I heard somebody knock on our front door, which annoyed me, because nobody ever knocks. That's why it's unlocked all the time, didn't they know that?

I took one last, long sip and then dumped the rest down the sink when I heard the person knock again, more loudly this time. "I'm coming," I called from the kitchen. And then, nearly inaudibly, "Hold your horses, for goodness sakes."

I walked into the living room and glanced over at the spot where Inka had been sitting, but she was no longer there. She'd probably gone to hide under my bed. I was sure she hadn't been finished with her impromptu bath, but she hated when there were people she didn't recognize in the house – it scared the living daylights out of her.

Busy kicking somebody's dirty shoe out of the way, I didn't see the person at the door until I pushed open the screen and greeted them in the indifferent tone I saved for strangers and solicitors. The only people that came to our door and knocked were either people from the state or the cops, and I wasn't about to allow them to believe I was exactly happy to see them.

"May I help you?" I demanded monotonously, and tossed my hair over my shoulder. At that moment I realized … this wasn't just anybody. It wasn't somebody from the state _or _the cops, for that matter. It was … oh, God. No. _No. _It wasn't … it couldn't possibly have been … but it was. An Army chaplain. He removed his hat out of respect and stood there looking somber, but there was no emotion, no expression in his eyes save for repeated sorrow, because he'd done this before with countless others, and I wasn't the first, and certainly wouldn't be the last.

I panicked. It wasn't fear, or anticipation. I panicked because I already knew. The yellow envelope in the man's shaky hand was only confirmation. But it couldn't have been real … it _wasn't_ real … because his tour was supposed to be over now … he should have been home, he and Steve both … this wasn't happening, not to us …

"Miss, are you his wife?" he asked. Wait, what?

I frowned, and thought, If I were, you certainly would not be calling me _miss. _"I'm his sister."

"I'm sorry … " The chaplain handed me the telegram, and my mouth went dry. I was sure the next time I opened my mouth, it would be to throw up all over his polished black shoes. "Your brother … he was killed in action in a firefight, trying to save another man … "

My heart finally stopped then and I looked down at the telegram. The little window told me all I needed to know. _The Secretary of the Army regrets to inform you … _

"He, uh" – the chaplain cleared his throat; he wasn't making this any easier on me or himself – "he was awarded – posthumously – the Purple Heart, for the wounds he sustained, and the Silver Star, for valor. They'll send you those in the mail … "

I didn't cry. I couldn't, and I wasn't sure I understood why. Instead, I managed to choke out, "What happened … I mean, to the other man? Did he live?"

The chaplain shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I don't know … I don't think so … "

I laughed bitterly. "So he died, then, huh? And Sodapop died trying to save him? Which means, what? He died for _nothing, _didn't he? Nothing at all, except that other guy's life. But what the hell does that matter?"

I was talking nonsense but I didn't care.

"He tried, I'm sure he did … they both did."

"Sure," I said helplessly, and closed the front door, leaving the chaplain to either remain on our front porch or go back to his car, either way painfully aware that he'd ruined yet another citizen's day.

My heart was completely shattered beyond repair. My lungs were dangerously close to collapsing. And to top it all off I couldn't cry, not at all. It just seemed so wrong … all of it. It wasn't fair. This is exactly what we'd all been dreading since he and Steve had left the year before … and now, of course, it had to happen when his tour was up, when he was supposed to have been home by now. What the hell was he doing in a firefight at the tail end of his time there?

I had no real need or want to read the telegram completely, because I already knew the facts and most of the details. I didn't want to know more, anyway, and I set it on the table instead and just stood there for a moment, completely in shock. I didn't know what to do. I blamed him for not going to Canada … he could have, he could have avoided this. I blamed God. I blamed everyone I could think of that was ultimately responsible for this, somehow. I blamed the President, the congressmen, the senators. I blamed the draft board. I blamed everyone and it didn't ease my pain, only made me come to the realization that this goddamn war had taken my brother, my best friend … and it had taken a part of me, too, just as I'd feared – and somehow known all along – that it would.

I thought about Darry and Ponyboy. They would be home any minute. This was going to kill them. I would have to tell them, show them the telegram … and it would destroy them. I didn't want to do it. I felt just as the Army chaplain did whenever he knocked on somebody's door or rang somebody else's doorbell, waiting for them to appear on the other side so that he could tell them …

My throat tightened. My mouth went completely dry and my hands were perspiring as they never had before. Calmly, collectedly, I walked the short way down the hall to the bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet, waiting, because I knew it was going to happen. I hated the anticipation more than the actual throwing up …

Finally it happened, and with it came the tears I'd been holding back until now. I vaguely recalled the times in the past when I'd been sick with the stomach flu, and I'd stay home from school for almost a week at a time. Soda would stay home with me and when I had to throw up he'd always hold my hair back and tell me it was okay … it only made me sob all the more, and I couldn't stop, no matter how hard I tried. After a while I just stopped trying because I knew it wouldn't do any good. I continued to vomit into the toilet bowl, flushing it repeatedly, and then when there seemed to be nothing left in me to throw up, including water, I dry heaved between sobs and sat back, trying to get a hold of myself.

Because none of this was real, or if it was, I didn't want it to be. My chest hurt and my hands were shaking violently. I was going to pass out, I knew I was …

I should have just let myself go then, there was nothing else I could do, but I heard the screen door open. I heard it and wanted to throw up all over again, but there was nothing left in me, just a familiar emptiness, and if I dry heaved one more time I was sure my heart would fall right out of my body and bleed all over the bathroom tile …

"Eleanor?" Darry appeared at the doorway and stood there. He didn't sound worried, really, which kind of surprised me. "Are you all right? Are you sick?"

Sick … I could have laughed. What a terrific word for it …

"No, I'm …" My throat tightened again. Oh, God … I thought I'd thrown up all I ever could already. Maybe not. Though I didn't see how it was possible to throw up emptiness. "Mail's on the table," I managed to choke out, even though my lungs were collapsing inside of me and I could barely breathe, let alone speak.

"What's that got to do with" – he looked at me strangely – "are you _sure _you're okay?"

"No," I whispered. My eyes were so sore from crying that I felt about ready to rip them from their sockets and flush them down the toilet along with my shattered heart and shriveled lungs. And I knew I wasn't finished yet. This was only the beginning … "I'm not okay, Darry."

"Well, what's the matter?"

"I told you." I couldn't believe he hadn't figured it out already. Or maybe he had and was just waiting for me to say I really was just sick, this would be over by tomorrow … Ponyboy appeared beside him then and looked shocked to see me in such an ill and compromised state. I always tried to be strong for my family, especially during the times when things got the roughest. Most of the time I really believed I was a strong girl, emotionally; it was rare for me to let my weaker side show, and I didn't blame him for being shocked.

"Told me _what? _Eleanor, would you please tell me what the problem is so I can – "

"It's Soda," I said at last, almost relieved to have finally gotten it out. I didn't look up at either of my brothers, though; I was afraid to see their reaction. I held onto the side of the toilet for support; I felt as if I'd fall over if I didn't hold onto _something. _I thought I heard the beginning of a muffled sob from Ponyboy but Darry was just standing there.

"What about him?" he wondered gravely. I knew why he'd asked that – he knew already, just like I had, but he was pretending our brother was just wounded somewhere, maybe at a hospital in Japan … he was hoping I would tell him that. I only wished I could. I wished I didn't have to tell him anything.

"It's … I told you … the telegram's on the table, with the mail … I didn't open it, any of it …" I was rambling. But I was at a loss for words. How was I supposed to say it? "He … it's … he got killed …"

I said it. It's not how I'd wanted to say it, though. I shouldn't even have been the one to tell them – that wasn't my job. I'd said it, though, and there was no going back. I told them everything then, about me being the only one home, and the Army chaplain, the telegram, the fact that our brother had died trying to save someone else … that was something we were all too familiar with, for the very same thing had occurred two years before. It was under different circumstances, of course, but the similarity was there.

"The guy said they awarded him the Purple Heart and the Silver Star," I explained, trying to get a hold of myself. "Posthumously, I mean. He said they'd send us that in the mail."

I felt almost grateful. The Purple Heart wasn't necessarily a good thing but he deserved the Silver Star. He really did. Even if the outcome was grim, he deserved it.

Ponyboy was looking at the telegram and after he finished he handed it to Darry. He looked about ready to cry, and he should have. He didn't have to hold it back in front of us now; this was serious. "But what about …" He didn't finish, I think purposely, but I knew what he meant.

"They have to send us his …" What was the right word? Remains? The chaplain hadn't specified _how _he'd died … I wondered absently if Steve knew. I wondered if he'd seen it happen. It prompted me to start thinking about what he must have been feeling … I couldn't even imagine. I hoped he was all right. My God, if something happened to him, too …

I didn't think I'd be able to go on if I lost both of them. I didn't even know how I was keeping myself together now; this was bad enough. 'Bad' didn't even come close to explaining it …

It kind of surprised me that Darry didn't cry the rest of that afternoon, or the evening, but I hadn't expected him to. He was too tough for that. Instead he looked stoic and tense and uptight, and he didn't talk much. He sorted through the mail that I had forgotten about and kept reading the telegram over and over, but all it did was confirm reality.

Pony and I cried together for a long time though, after I'd quit throwing up. Darry didn't really make an effort to console us because there wasn't much point to that – he couldn't tell us it was okay, because it wasn't. He didn't do much comforting, anyway.

It was very cleansing to cry but after a while we stopped, and I don't know how we kept ourselves from lapsing into another wave of tears, because God knows it was hard enough already. For a while though we talked about old memories, and the past, and I dug out some of my many photographs that were scattered everywhere in my corner of our room. Most of them were pictures of me and Soda and Steve but that didn't matter. We'd done something like this after Mama and Daddy died, too. I guess it was tradition, in a sense, to take a trip down Memory Lane right after you've lost someone … I wasn't sure why.

We never had dinner that night. None of us were the least bit hungry and I'd spent the better part of the afternoon emptying my stomach into the toilet, all out of complete shock and disbelief and utter sadness – of course I was in no mood to eat. There was no doubt in my mind that I'd compulsively throw it all back up again if I even attempted it; I was grieving that much. We all were.

Darry decided to go to bed early – I didn't blame him – but before he did he handed me an envelope. "Did you look through the mail this afternoon?" he wondered.

I shook my head. "No. Why?"

"That's from Steve," he told me, and my eyes widened, for it was very unlike Steve to write me something himself … without Soda. It made me want to cry again, a little bit, and I set it aside. I'd read it later.

Ponyboy looked at me curiously. "You gonna open it?"

"Yeah," I answered tiredly. I wanted to go to bed, too. We all needed it by now. "I'll open it sometime."

When I did at last, it was late, and I wasn't sure why I was still awake. It had to be close to one in the morning, if not past it. I'd tried to eat a little something before I'd gone to bed but as I'd predicted, it came right back up, which only set off another onslaught of tears. Darry had been asleep for maybe two hours by then and Pony had just gone to bed himself, but I sat in the bathroom for about an hour after that, crying silently. Inka had let herself into the room and sat down on the tile, looking up at me expectantly. I don't know what she wanted but I think she knew that I was upset. She looked at me for a long time, then sniffed around the bathroom a little bit, and then left, and I was alone again.

And now I was lying in bed, looking over Steve's letter tiredly. It was short, but it didn't have to be longer than it was. He hadn't bothered to date it, but after reading it I got the feeling he probably didn't know or care what day or what month or even what year it was.

_El – _

_If you're reading this I guess you know about Soda. Or if you don't yet … sorry I had to be the one to tell you. You should know though, since it happened yesterday …_

_My tour's up two days from now. Should be home in the next week or so, maybe a little more. But I'm glad to be getting out of this piece of shit country already – it's worse than hell._

_Don't bother writing back or anything, I probably won't even get it. But I miss you a lot, honey. I'll call you whenever I get to the bus depot – you better be there to pick me up, 'cause I won't have a ride and I've done enough walking for one lifetime._

_El … I don't know what you and me are gonna do without Soda. It sure ain't gonna be the same, is it? I really do miss you._

_Steve_

I sighed then, and set it on my bedside table. I wasn't feeling anything right then. Not at all. For some reason his letter meant almost nothing to me. It would, maybe by tomorrow. But now, I just … didn't care.

The irony behind the fact that my brother, the one person who was always so full of life and enthusiasm and charisma, was now nothing more than a numbered corpse in an unjust war made me go numb to the point of not caring about anything. I couldn't feel, and I certainly couldn't cry anymore. I could only puke out my guts until there was nothing left but a dull ache, and a hollow emptiness, and a fleeting glimmer of hope that this was all just a big joke. A dirty, terrible joke that we could all just laugh about twenty years from now.

But it wasn't, and it never would be. And no matter how much I wanted to pretend, I knew he wasn't coming back.

xxx

**A/N: **The Tuesday after my grandma died we got together at my grandma and grandpa's house and did the same type of thing with the pictures and memories. That was mostly for these posterboards to display at the visitation, but it was the same concept. This was really tough to write actually and I kind of tried to remember - not like I could forget - how I felt when she died and when my mom told me she wasn't gonna make it, and I tried to make Eleanor feel the same type of emotions even though the circumstances are entirely different. The grieving process takes a long, long time, and I'm still in shock over this - it's just so hard to believe because I was that close to her. And because personal experiences sometimes help to shape what you write I'm trying to use that to make this more real for Eleanor, if that makes any sense.

So that's Chapter Twenty-Three. Now I'm not really sure where I'm going to this even though I have a basic plan, so I guess I'll have Chapter Twenty-Four whenever.

Reviews are appreciated!


	24. Twenty Four

**A/N: **I know, I know. I suck. I haven't updated in over a month, I know. But I'm not dead! At any rate, feel free to throw tomatoes.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Long Time Gone," written by David Crosby and performed by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

**Chapter Twenty-Four:**

" … _it's been a long time comin' / it's going to be a long time gone … "_

I don't know why I called Barbara a few days later. I was still in a daze and didn't even know what the hell I was doing half the time but why I called her, of all people, was beyond me. She didn't really say anything when I told her—just that she was sorry, but she wasn't, really. I could tell. She didn't know my brother. There was no real sincerity in her voice, and I hadn't spoken to her since the trip so it was kind of awkward, as well.

And when I hung up I didn't feel any different. I'd thought I would, but I just felt the same. I did feel like crying but that never happened. I had to call the VA, though. I had to tell them … I wasn't sure I'd come in again, or when, if I ever did. I thought about Jack and Trevor quite a bit as I looked up the number and dialed it on the rotary. Especially about Jack. I didn't know what was happening between us and I didn't know if I would see him again. Maybe, if I felt better sometime …

"Thank you for calling the Veterans' Administrations Hospital. How may I help you?"

She sounded so clipped and proper. But I knew her. "Hi, Maureen? It's Eleanor."

"Oh." She sounded rather surprised. "Hello, Eleanor. How are you? We're expecting you today."

"I know," I said uneasily. "I won't be coming in. That's why I called …"

"Really? Why not?" A pause. When I didn't reply, she said, "Is everything all right?"

"No. Not exactly." I told her everything then, about the afternoon movie and the telegram and Steve's letter. I don't know why I was including so many useless details; maybe because Ponyboy was exactly right—I talked a lot when I was upset. But Maureen didn't judge me by that or interrupt me or anything—she just listened. And when I was finished I wanted to apologize for taking up so much of her time but maybe that wasn't necessary. At least not with her.

There was silence on the other end for a long time, but when she spoke at last I recognized alarm and sorrow in her voice, and it wasn't forced sympathy like with Barbara. It was real. "Oh, Eleanor, I'm so sorry. That must be … I can't even imagine. Are you doing all right?"

"No, I'm … I don't know. I don't know anything anymore." My voice broke suddenly like a dam, and I expected the tears to rush forth like the river that was trapped behind it. But they didn't come. "I just called to say I won't be coming in today … and I won't be for a while … I don't know when I'll be back …"

Or if. But I didn't tell her that.

"That's perfectly fine, dear. You take all the time you need."

I smiled faintly to myself, grateful for her sympathy. Nobody else, really, had been half that nice, except maybe my teachers. But since I was a senior now they expected me to get most if not all of my homework done while I wasn't in school. I already knew that wouldn't be happening, and they were just gonna have to accept it. Hadn't_ they_ ever lost anyone?

"Could you tell Jack for me? And Trevor, too."

"Jack Pace?"

"Yeah. And Trevor."

"Sure. Of course I will."

"And tell him that …" What? What did I have to tell him? _I love you_?No. And especially not this way. I sighed resignedly, and twisted the phone cord around my index finger. "Just tell him why I won't be there."

"Sure," Maureen said. "I'll do that."

"Thank you."

"And, if you need anything …"

"Yeah," I said quietly. I hadn't meant to cut her off, but I didn't want to talk anymore. "Thanks, Maureen. Bye."

No sooner had I set the telephone back on the base, then, that it rang again. I jumped from the chair slightly, startled, for that was the last thing I expected to happen. The days before answering machines and call waiting meant the phone didn't stop ringing—it just rang and rang until somebody decided to answer it. So I gave myself a minute after the slight shock of it all and relaxed. I half-expected it to be the Army, calling to inform us that all of this was just a big mistake, a mix-up in the paperwork. Sorry for the scare, for the tears and the heartache, sorry for everything …

Angry and upset, knowing it wasn't and never would be the Army, I picked up the receiver with hate and venom leaking from every pore in my body, and said with disgust, _"What?"_

There was a pause. Which only made me realize the possible extent of what I'd just said … "Well, that sure wasn't the type of greeting I was expecting."

"Steve!"

"Hi, Eleanor."

"Hi! Wow! How was … I mean, no." _How was Vietnam? _Had I actually been about to ask him that? "Are you back? When did you get here? Where _are _you? Because I—"

"Wait, hold that thought. You weren't just about to ask me how Vietnam was, were you?"

I smiled, much to my surprise, because I hadn't at all since before the telegram. But he knew me too well. "Well, yeah. You'll have to understand, under the circumstances. My mind's been unclear for days."

"Yeah. Mine, too."

"How _was _Vietnam, anyway?"

He sighed, sounding exhausted. "A little hot for Heaven, if you can dig that."

"Oh." I thought about it a moment, and then nodded, understanding. "Yeah, I dig that."

"Right. Look, you wanna come pick me up, or somethin'? I don't got a ride and there was no one else to call …"

"Thanks a lot. But yeah, I'll come. Where are you?"

"Bus depot, right in town." I didn't say anything for a second, because I was trying to figure out the easiest way there, but he must have assumed I didn't know what he was talking about. "Should I stand outside and wave you down or can you make it yourself?"

"No. I mean, yes. It's fine. I was trying to think about directions. I've got it now. I'm …"

"What?"

"Nothing. I'm just … I'm really glad you're back, Steve. And not …" I think I had been about to say, _And not dead, _but that just sounded wrong. "I mean, I'm glad you're okay."

"Yeah. Me, too." He paused, and I thought he was going to say something about the fact that it was good to be home, but he didn't, so maybe it wasn't. Or maybe he didn't know yet. "Well, are you comin', or what? I'm starving over here, you know."

I laughed. "Just sit tight. I'll be there soon. Anything you want, as long as I'm out? I think I might have to stop and get gas, anyway."

"A six-pack would be great, if you don't mind."

"Nice try, but I can't get away with buying alcohol legally until 1972."

"Oh. Was it only a year I was gone? I thought it was longer."

"Not quite. I'll see you soon."

I hung up then, and afterwards, I realized just how much he'd changed in only a year, and I hadn't even come face-to-face with him yet. I could just tell by the sound of his voice, and that scared me.

The air was cool when I stepped outside, and almost kind of refreshing, in a way. It wasn't anything drastic—I could still feel the humidity, so summer hadn't quite surrendered to autumn just yet—but it was there all the same, a simple tease of the coming season. Leaves were already beginning to turn. The golden ones looked pretty in the fading sunlight.

I drove into town where cars were parked diagonal to the sidewalk and men in crisp business suits walked from office buildings to those cars, heading home to their families. It was five o'clock. Their families, whose sons weren't in Vietnam, but somewhere safe, because their fathers could afford to keep them out of the draft board's consciousness. Women in flowery dresses strolled hand-in-hand with their young children, girls too small to understand and boys much too young to go off and fight. I wanted to be little like them again. Little enough so that I wouldn't have to worry about this stuff, at least not until high school where, by then, it'd be a part of history, and young teachers who'd never known what it was like to be involved would teach it without ever _really _knowing.

But it wouldn't work because half of us would consider it trite and boring, just like some people did now when we had Gettysburg and Normandy and the Solomon Islands shoved at us. But it wasn't that we didn't want to learn. It was that we didn't understand.

I heard honking behind me, and I turned to look. An impatient-looking elderly man leaned out the window of a chalky white Studebaker, appraising me with a nasty glare. I wondered why, until I turned back and realized I'd been sitting at the light long after it had turned from red to green. Embarrassed, I floored it, and after about a block, the elderly man turned the corner and I breathed a sigh of relief. For some reason I had the terrible mental image that he had come equipped with a pitchfork in the trunk and was going to chase me down with it for holding him up without good reason.

I drove on then, past the shop where most of the local "hippies" went, if you could even label the ones around here—and even I had to resist the urge to make a quick detour to stop in and look around—past the television store, the place I'd been first exposed to the second Kennedy assassination three months earlier, past a newsstand and a coffee shop and the record store, and I wondered why I was noticing all of these places. The answer, whatever it was, eluded me.

The bus depot was a small building, right on the corner, and there was a bus there when I drove up. Two elderly women got on in exchange for two GIs who got off. They stood there blindly for a moment, clad in their dark green fatigues and shiny black combat boots, as I parked kitty-corner to where they were, and they looked around and back at each other, unsure about their surroundings and what to do with themselves. I wondered if they knew each other well or if they had just happened to get on the same bus. After a minute they went inside, and I didn't see Steve around, as I had expected, so I decided to follow.

And Steve was using the pay telephone when I walked inside. I had no idea who he could have been calling, but it didn't matter. I took a seat in a plastic chair and picked up a copy of _Life _magazine, but it had a picture of some soldiers fighting in Vietnam on the cover, and one of them looked like Sodapop, so I put it back.

"I nearly get my ass shot off twenty thousand miles away, and now you won't even give me my damn job back? What kinda sick country is this?" A pause. "Yeah, well, thanks for nothin', man."

He hung up with irritated fervor and looked angry, but I had an idea. He hadn't noticed I was there—not yet, at least. I picked up another magazine, some boring one about the stock market, and pretended to be totally engrossed in it as he took a seat beside me. I thought it was funny that he didn't seem to recognize me, and almost laughed right out loud. Almost. But I didn't, because if I had, he would have known instantly.

"That sounded like an interesting phone call," I observed slowly. I kept my eyes on the magazine, still acting as if it were the most engaging thing I'd ever read.

"I just came back from a _war, _I could have gotten killed," he explained spitefully, "and they won't even give me my damn job back. You believe that?"

"That's too bad," I said. I tried to act aloof and nonchalant, but it wasn't going over well, as I was all but shocked by what he was saying. I didn't believe a word of it. They wouldn't just deprive him of his job at the gas station—Steve was probably the best mechanic in town, which was saying something, because Tulsa was not small by any means—and I couldn't understand that.

"Tell me about it. What are the odds of me getting another one?"

"Maybe it's just because you were in the war," I suggested. "They don't treat returning veterans too well—they claim that's why there _is _a war."

"Yeah, well, that's no reason to …" He trailed off, and inched forward in realization. "Y'know, you remind me of—wait a second." He grabbed the magazine from me and looked at it, shaking his head. "Yeah. You _would _read this, Eleanor."

"I would not! I mean—uh, Eleanor? My name's … Elaine."

"Or did you forget that that's your middle name, and you're not a good liar?"

"Yes to both," I replied with a sigh. "But don't tell me you knew it was me all along. I put a lot of work into that … alternate personality."

"Yeah, right. Come on, El—you can't fool me. I know you anywhere. I knew you were on your way over here, anyway."

"Well, just to let you know—I don't read stock market magazine."

"I didn't say you did. I said you _would."_

"I wouldn't. Not unless I really had to." I paused. "Is that really true? About the job?"

"Shit. Don't remind me."

"I'm sorry. I can't believe they'd do that—don't they know how good you are?"

"Apparently they've got someone better now, or that's what they tell me. But maybe what you said was true—about the returning veterans thing."

"I am sorry. Really."

"Don't be. I'll show them—I'll get a better job, someday. I don't really think I feel up to working right away, as it is. Just 'cause of … well, what happened. I mean, with Soda."

"Yeah. That's perfectly understandable."

"What've you been doing since then?" he wondered quietly. "I mean, since you found out."

I sighed. "Really just trying to live. I haven't gone to school, or the salon, or the VA … I haven't done anything. And I haven't cried at all since the day we got the telegram, which I find extremely surprising." And for a moment I felt frustrated about that. "Do you think that's normal?"

"You're asking the wrong person," he explained. "You know me—I don't cry. Anyway," he went on, "let's get out of here. I'm starving, and I've had enough of the military."

"Me, too. Let's go."

I hadn't realized until just then that he still wore his own fatigues and combat boots, too. He looked thinner than I remembered him, but at the same time more muscular and stronger, more hardened. It scared me a little bit, because I knew it meant he'd been through a lot, and recovering from the war was going to be less than simple for a while.

We walked outside, where another bus had pulled up, and Steve stopped when he saw my car. He looked annoyed, or confused. I couldn't figure out which. "That piece of shit is yours?"

I felt upset, then, but only mildly so. "Piece of shit, my ass!" It was a Volkswagen Microbus, the only thing I could afford, but it ran well and that's all that mattered to me. So what if it was a used car. So what if the interior was a little ripped in places. So what if the exhaust pipe sputtered every once in a while. As long as it did run well and get me places without any trouble, I was happy. "I'll have you know, I paid good money for this."

"Oh, I'm sure you did." He smirked. "The junkyard isn't very expensive, is it?"

I shoved him playfully, but I wasn't angry because I figured he was only kidding with me. Maybe. "I happen to like it," I declared.

"Yeah, so, now what are you gonna do? Paint it all those wild colors?"

"I should, shouldn't I?"

"Nah, just leave it. It's light blue already. What more do you want from it?"

"I was just thinking about painting an American flag on one side of it," I told him.

"And what, 'Peace on Earth' on the other?"

"Not exactly, but now that you've mentioned it …"

"I think you should just leave it. Now let's go before I die of hunger. And, hey, where's that six-pack you promised me?"

"Oh, that." I smiled, glad that he was home now, and safe, and that things were beginning to return to normal, slowly but surely. "I got a little thirsty on the way over."

xxx

**A/N: **Yikes, that was way longer than I had generally intended—seven pages typed on Microsoft Word, lol. Oh, well. Perhaps it makes up for my lengthy absence.

Oh, and good news (at least for me)—I'm going to see New Colony Six and The Grass Roots at this rib fest around here on June 30th! Through work, my aunt met New Colony Six's founding member this week, and she told him she'd go, and I get to go too because New Colony Six is one of my favorite Sixties Chicago bands and The Grass Roots are really just awesome. And I just thought I'd share that, because it's exciting and I can't wait.

Reviews are appreciated!


	25. Twenty Five

**A/N: **Wow, I suck. I lost track … I haven't updated in, what, almost three months? Damn. I'm breaking my own record here. I'm so sorry. It's been a busier summer than I expected, lol. Finals, school ending, Beatles tribute concerts, other events involving oldies music, Fourth of July and family coming in from out of town (that is including four cousins all younger than ten!), getting my license … it has been quite eventful, to say the least! But now I'm back, and I come bearing a nice long chapter that will hopefully compensate for my prolonged absence!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Wish You Were Here," written by Roger Waters and David Gilmour and performed by Pink Floyd.

---

**Chapter Twenty-Five:**

" … _we're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year / running over the same old ground, what have we found? … "_

"You know, I don't think I can do this. This funeral thing." It was the only way I could refer to it without choking up. 'This funeral thing.' As if it wasn't my brother's, but some family friend's cousin that I didn't know, couldn't care about. "What if I pass out, or something?"

Steve looked exasperated, and kind of cross, because I was over-dramatizing again. I couldn't even fix my hair properly. I was trying to pull it back in a barrette but my hands were trembling so badly, I just couldn't. I almost gave up, too. "You'll be fine."

"Look at me, I'm shaking like a leaf. I'll be everything _but _fine."

"It's just nerves," he assured me.

"Is that what you call grief? _Nerves?"_

He only shrugged. We were both trying to deal with this as best we could, but it wasn't working. Steve looked tense, which was nothing particularly new, but he also looked shaky and agitated, and … was that fear I sensed? I'd never seen him looking scared before, not even in the photos he and Soda used to send me from Vietnam. It bothered me. If _he_ was afraid of this, how the hell was_ I_ going to keep myself together? Aside from the trembling, I looked fine on the outside, but inside, I was an emotional train wreck. I still felt as if my heart was going to stop at any moment, or that my lungs were going to shrivel up into raisins and I'd just collapse from complete lack of oxygen.

Admittedly, I wanted to die. It just seemed to reach that stage.

My calendar said September, 1968, but I felt as if I'd been catapulted twenty years into the future. I seemed to have aged that much in only a few days. I even looked a little different. Older. I thought so, anyway. Maybe nobody else noticed, but I sure did.

"You're wearing that?"

Steve's voice startled me out of my thoughts, and I looked down at my dress instinctively, smoothing the skirt down with my hands. It was pretty—blue and white tweed, short sleeves. Barbara had let me borrow it and never asked for it back. I kept meaning to remind her about it, but I rarely spoke to her anymore and when I did, I forgot all about it.

"What, this? What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing. I just wondered. Where'd you get it?"

"Oh, I—" I realized I'd never told him about Barbara. I hadn't told Soda, either. I wondered why. It was a little late in the game now. "I bought it."

"With money?"

I looked at him strangely. "No, with rocks and tree bark over at the trading post. Of course with money. What do you think?"

"Well, how was I supposed to know? Chicks 'round here don't wear nice-lookin' stuff like that."

"It's a special occasion," I admonished feebly. "And I'm guessing you're wearing that?"

His Army uniform. And not just the standard green fatigues I picked him up from the bus depot in. It was the real thing and he looked very handsome and cleaned up. I noticed the corporal stripes on his shoulder.

"When did you get promoted to corporal?"

"How do you know ranks?"

"I volunteered at the VA hospital," I reminded him. "I know ranks." I tossed the barrette onto my dresser with frustration and picked up a cobalt blue headband that matched my dress instead. "So, when did this happen?"

"It's not that big of a deal, El."

"To me, it is. So tell me."

"All right. You really wanna know?" I nodded. "Okay. Here's what happened. I got shot in the leg. They gave me a Purple Heart, and then promoted me to corporal. I went back to my unit. That explain it?" And then he shrugged nonchalantly, and lit a cigarette—and I was aggravated and confused.

"Wait a second. Steve, you got shot? And you didn't tell me? What if you died?"

"Soda didn't think I should worry you. So I didn't."

"As long as it was minor, I wouldn't have been worried. I would have been _relieved _that you were all right."

"Yeah. I'm all right."

"Well, I know that _now. _And I'm glad. But you should have told me."

"Are you mad?" His tone of voice suggested he didn't really care if I was mad or not, so why he was asking was beyond me.

"No. I'm not mad. I'm too emotionally exhausted already to be mad." I finished with my mascara, capped it, and put it back on my dresser. I shouldn't even have bothered with makeup; I looked like some too pale apparition from a horror movie. I would have been better off without it. But it was too late now; I wasn't going to waste time wiping it all off. "Anyway, congratulations on getting promoted. And on getting the Purple Heart."

And for once, that smug attitude of his wasn't present. "That thing's not an honor, Eleanor."

"Well, what is it, then?"

"Just a thing that proves you couldn't beat Charlie."

"Oh." I couldn't argue, because, in a way, he was sort of right. But Soda had gotten one, too, posthumously—just like he'd gotten the Silver Star, which was different, but something to be proud of nonetheless. I still thought the Purple Heart was an honor—you really had to be brave to get one. I think that's how a lot of soldiers sustain their wounds, out of acts of bravery and pure guts. Just like Jack, and Trevor, and Hollywood. And Sodapop.

A moment later Darry poked his head in the doorway. He looked very handsome in his suit, too. "You guys ready to go?"

"I am." Physically, anyway. Emotionally, it just wasn't happening. I turned to Steve, who was sitting on Soda's bed. He'd been there for the past half hour or so, watching me fix my hair, because apparently he had nothing better to do. "What about you? Are _you _ready to go?"

He shrugged half-heartedly and stood up. "Ready as I'll ever be, I guess."

Darry patted him on the back as he left the room, and then he put his arm around me. "You holding up all right, Eleanor?"

"I think so. For now." My stomach turned uneasily as I remembered Mama and Daddy's funeral. "But that'll change, I know it."

"I've got tissues in my pocket, if ya need 'em."

"Which I will. Thanks, Darry." I patted his arm. "Hold onto some for yourself, too." And after a brief hesitation, "Where's Ponyboy?"

"He's in the car already, I think." He glanced out the front door and nodded. "Yeah, he's there. Hand me the keys, will ya?"

I nodded, and picked up my sweater, as well. He was acting strangely calm and collected for having just lost his brother, and now having to attend his funeral, too. I still don't know how he did it—kept himself together so well, I mean. It never ceased to amaze me, really. I was such a sap, myself, but I was grateful to have come from such a strong family background. "Hey, Eleanor, who are you going with?"

I frowned. "What, now?"

"Riding with. To the cemetery." He seemed to mumble that last word. It felt weird to all of us to say it. It just seemed so foreign, still, even after Mama and Daddy. Still as foreign as Vietnam.

"Oh," I said. "I think I'll ride with Steve, if you don't mind."

He nodded, understanding better than I thought he would. "Yeah. That's fine. You guys probably need each other right now."

"If you want me to ride with you, I will—"

"No, go ahead. We'll see you there."

"Right." I nodded slowly, not liking the finality in either of our voices. "See you there."

He waved sadly and got in the car, and I pulled my sweater on over my shoulders and walked across the yard to Steve's, taking my time because I wasn't ready for this to be real yet. When I opened the car door, he leaned over and said, "Not riding with your brothers?"

"Well, obviously not. Now, can I sit in the front, or am I still banished to the back seat?"

"You were never banished in the first place."

"Well," I countered, "as I recall, I never actually had a choice."

"And now you do. So come on, we're gonna be late."

"I'd rather not go at all," I said mournfully. "I'd rather throw myself over a cliff."

"Yeah," Steve agreed, and floored it, peeling out and away from the curb. "Me, too."

We didn't speak to one another at all during the ride over, which was probably just as well, because there was really nothing to be said. I knew that none of us could make head or tail of this, but it was useless to ask why or demand an answer because it had happened, he was gone, and we couldn't bring him back. And the only thing that Steve said when we arrived there was, "Well, we're here"—stating the obvious as he came to an intentionally and considerably slow stop alongside the curb.

"You can park inside the cemetery, you know," I told him.

"I don't want to park inside the cemetery, El."

"Okay. Fine, then."

He started to get out, and when I didn't move, he said, "You comin' or not?"

"Not, I wish. Can't I just have it broadcasted to me in two weeks?"

"El, come on. If I can get through this, you can, too."

"You're tougher than I am," I argued. "I can't get through this. I'll just … I can't. I'll go to pieces, I know it."

"Well, you're not the only one." He hesitated, looking decidedly impatient. "Come on, Eleanor. The longer you sit there, the longer you're gonna have to wait to just get through it. You're only makin' it worse for yourself."

"I just never imagined this happening, that's all."

"Yeah, well, neither did the rest of us. Now, come on."

With effort, I forced myself out of the car and ambled along like I knew my purpose, but really I was dreading each step. I sort of felt like turning around and running. Not back to the car. Just running until my lungs gave out or my heart stopped, or until I came to where the land ended and the ocean began. Whichever came first.

"Sorry I've been acting like such a baby about this," I said, my voice quiet.

Steve was expressionless. "You can't help it."

"Suddenly you're Mr. Understanding." It was more of a statement than a question. Regardless, he didn't answer. It seemed like such a long walk from Steve's car to … well, the area, and I wished I'd thought of something better to say.

But we walked in silence after that. I had to fight the urge to talk, as much as I thought it would help to calm my nerves, because I knew it would only be in vain. It felt strange to me, because I always chattered away to Soda if something was bothering me, and he never did mind … but things had changed.

And I knew it would be a lot different if I tried to talk to Darry and Ponyboy the way I used to talk to Soda. Darry would listen and nod every once in a while to prove that he at least _was _listening, but it wouldn't go much further than that. And Ponyboy, he would keep interrupting me with little side stories of his own, and I'd never be able to get a word in edgewise. Steve was just indifferent, most of the time … but he was the exception because he was my best friend.

I was staring at my feet as I trudged through the uneven rows of headstones, because I didn't want to look at them, and after a moment Steve grabbed my wrist with more force than I knew he had intended to use and pulled me along sharply.

"What the … ?" He'd startled the hell out of me. "God, just rip my arm out of its socket, while you're at it!"

"El, it was either that, or pick you up and carry you. You walk too slow."

"Well, excuse me for living. It's not my fault I don't want to do this. Maybe it'll be over by the time we get there." I struggled as his grasp on my wrist grew tighter. "Let _go _of me."

"Not a chance. At the rate _you're _going, I'll have a beard by the time we get there."

"Don't flatter yourself," I muttered. He relented and let go of me, and I stomped off ahead of him. I'd forgotten how large this cemetery was, unless that was my mind playing tricks on me—but it was right in the middle of town and it seemed as if everybody who'd lived and died in the past hundred years here was buried somewhere inside. There were headstones so old that the names and dates had faded almost to invisibility, so old that the stone was cracked and crumbling and disintegrating, and the grass around it had been reduced to nothing but barren earth. It was disturbing, but not nearly as disturbing as the fresh graves, no matter how old the person being buried in them was. The young ones seemed to be the worst, though—the kids and the teenagers. And Soda.

There was one area of the cemetery that was reserved strictly for military personnel, and that's where we were headed. It wasn't far from the car at all, but everything seemed so distanced from me that it appeared to be miles from where we were. I hated that. I just wanted to get it over with. I felt guilty and selfish for thinking that way, but I couldn't help it.

When we got there, I stood between Darry and Steve and shoved my hands into my pockets and kept my eyes on the ground below me. I didn't want to look, or I couldn't. Maybe both. It wasn't as if the casket was opened now. Though it was still real, and whoever was there probably thought I was a coward, but I didn't care. Instead I glanced at both of my brothers, briefly. Darry was expressionless, and he stood tall and stern with his hands together like a businessman, but I could still sense the anguish and the grief no matter how well he was able to disguise it. Ponyboy was staring at the ground the way I was, except he kept fidgeting, like he couldn't stand completely still, and I didn't blame him for that. When he caught my eye I gave him a sympathetic smile, which he only returned with a nod before looking away. So much for empathy. But perhaps I was expecting too much of people. I had to lighten up a little, I was learning quickly.

I noticed then that Two-Bit had materialized somehow next to Steve, and I figured he must have just arrived because the two of them exchanged a somber glance and a handshake that still managed to look tough despite the circumstances. He'd come with his mother and his little sister. His mother came over to each of us and expressed her condolences and asked us how we were holding up, and I could see why Two-Bit was one of the only people on our side of town who didn't have some type of hang-up with at least one of his parents—she was a nice woman, and very caring. I liked her and I knew my brothers did, as well.

His sister, Carolyn, didn't say much of anything. She was nine, so I didn't blame her for being a bit reticent, especially since she hardly saw us. But she had the same laughing eyes as her brother so I knew there was no way she was like that all the time. At Mrs. Mathew's request, she did manage a tiny "hello" to us all as a collective, but that was about all we heard from her. From that point forward she mostly just kept her eyes low, and sucked her thumb absently.

It was a nice service, very quiet and peaceful, just like Mama and Daddy's, and quite unlike the war … but about halfway through I began to tremble kind of uncontrollably. I tried to hide it as best I could, but I don't really know or care how successful I was. I don't think it was because I was cold—it couldn't have been, because I was sweating like some out-of-shape woman who'd just gotten through running a marathon—but it sure looked and felt that way.

And if I kept on standing there, so still like that despite the trembling, I think I would have fainted. I was already feeling lightheaded as it was, partly because I couldn't believe it was really real, and partly because the constant losses that I had experienced over the past couple of years were finally adding up. I wavered on my feet a bit, stepped back, and then slipped off, away from everyone. There was a tree nearby and I braced myself against it, breathing heavily. I guess my unceremonious exit had not gone completely unnoticed, though, because before long Steve was there, too.

I reached out with my free hand and grabbed his shoulder, trying to steady myself. "Steve, I think I'm dying," I said breathlessly.

"No, you're not," he said. He sounded as if he'd been crying but I couldn't be sure. "Come with me a minute. You need to sit down."

"No, I don't. I think I'll be fine in a second. Just let me …"

"El, you're white as a ghost. If you don't sit down you're gonna pass out. I mean it."

His car was nearby, just down the hill a ways (not that far at all, I realized; it really had appeared that way, though) and he unlocked it quick and made me sit down in the driver's seat. Leaving the door open, I faced the outside and tried to find a focal point so that I could direct my thoughts elsewhere, somewhere that wasn't here. It wasn't that cold out but I was freezing, I really was. My hands were clammy and my skin seemed to take on this pallid grayish color. Steve knelt in front of me and told me to put my head between my legs.

"What for?" I demanded skeptically.

"It will keep you from passing out," he explained, and so I did it, but it didn't really work, because I still felt dizzy.

"Now all the blood will rush to my head," I said, though I think my voice was a little bit muffled. I felt hysterical, like I was going insane.

"That's the whole point, Eleanor. Just listen to me."

"You're trying to make me die, aren't you? All the blood will rush to my head and I'll have a stroke."

I wasn't watching but I knew he'd rolled his eyes at that. I had been around him almost my whole life and it was just second nature now. "Don't be ridiculous."

For a long time after that neither of us spoke. I lifted my head a bit and brushed my hair away from my face. It was uncomfortable to sit like that and it made my back hurt. "Hey, Steve?"

"What?"

"Were you there? I mean … did you see it happen, when he got shot?" I knew it was a touchy subject. I hadn't asked him about it before, but I needed to know. And now seemed like as good a time as any. "If you don't want to talk about it, it's—"

"I saw it," he said. "I didn't think it was him. I mean, I knew it was, but I just … In my mind, it wasn't him. It was that Gardner kid. Remember him? I know we told you about him … "

"But I thought Gardner was—"

"Dead. He is. Been a year already. But when something like that happens, you don't see it all right away. I didn't, anyway. I mean, it just seems so—"

"Unreal," I finished. "Seems that way now, too. That's why I couldn't stay over there anymore. I had to leave, or … I really think I would have died. But now I feel like … I mean, this is my _brother, _and then I just walk off and leave. It's like some sort of weird betrayal." And suddenly I felt terrible.

"I don't think so," Steve said. "I think he'd understand. If it were you I think he would have done the same thing."

"That's grim reassurance, but thanks." I bit my lip. "I don't think I can go back over there."

"I don't think I can, either."

"I really hope he can understand, wherever he is. Cemeteries creep me out, anyway. He knew that. They always have."

"Even though he'll be in that section with America's finest?"

"Yeah, even though." I sighed. "If they play taps I think I will lose it. I haven't cried since the telegram but I know if they play that song …"

"They will," he said matter-of-factly. "Soda fought in Vietnam, and he won a medal,_ and_ he was a specialist fourth class. They'll play taps."

I thought about asking how _he _had gotten promoted, but I was just feeling dead and in a moment it was altogether forgotten. It didn't matter now, anyway. "I don't want to listen."

"Then don't. No one's making you."

"Dad taught me that song on the piano," I explained. "He tried to teach me reveille, too, but it was too fast, and I gave up. I played taps a lot, though. You only needed one finger to play that. Or at least I did."

"They played reveille at boot camp," Steve said, "to make you wake up in the morning. Glory, that was annoying."

"My dad told me that at the end of the funeral for a soldier or someone like that they play reveille. I always wondered why, because it's such a bouncy song, not really the funeral type, y'know? But now I know why, or at least I think I do."

"Really? Why?"

"You said they played it to wake you up in the morning," I said. "If they play it at the end of a funeral it's like … it takes on the sort of meaning of maybe waking up into a new life. You know? Like the afterlife, I guess."

"That's a neat theory, El. Maybe you're right." Then he shoved me over a little bit and climbed in beside me, pulling the door shut behind him. "Hey, what about your friend Jack? You talk to him lately?"

I shook my head, wondering how he'd known about Jack. But then I remembered I'd told him and Soda all about Jack and Trevor in one of my letters. That was a while ago. "No. When we got that telegram, I just … I couldn't go back there. I called and told them why, and I just … I couldn't, you know? I haven't been back there since then."

"But you want to."

"Are you asking me, or telling me?"

"Telling you," he said. "You want to go back. It's because you're in love with him, isn't it?"

I felt my heart go numb. Was I in love with Jack? I couldn't tell. I liked him a lot, but until Steve brought it up I never really thought about it that much, except for that one time. And, damn it, I still had his dog tags, and I still had no clue as to what I was supposed to do with them … "He said he wants to marry me."

"He proposed?"

"No. He just said he wants to someday, that's all."

"Then he proposed."

"No, he didn't!" I held out my hand. "Do you see a ring on my finger?"

"You don't always need a ring to ask someone to marry you," he said. "I mean, I could ask you to marry me right now, and I don't have no diamond on me."

"You wouldn't ask me that, anyway," I said.

"No. You're right. I wouldn't."

"And I'm not even offended by that," I said, "because a) you're not in love with me and I'm not in love with you, and b) we're more like brother and sister than anything else."

"Don't forget c) we read each others' minds too much and would probably drive each other crazy."

"Which would _definitely _lead to a miserable divorce," I said, and found myself laughing a bit. It was the first in days. And it felt really good, too. Geez, Soda, I thought to myself, you'll really have to understand us not being over there right now.

"But, like I was saying—"

"Hey, wait a minute," I said. "How would _you _know about not needing a ring, anyway?"

"I just know."

"If you're keeping something from me—"

"Have I ever?"

"No," I said. "But there's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

"You never answered my question," he said.

"Which question was that?"

"About being in love with Jack."

"That's because that wasn't a question, Steve," I said. "You were _telling _me, remember?"

"But you are in love with him, aren't you?"

"Do you have to put me on the spot?"

"Eleanor," he said, "if people don't put you on the spot, they never get a straight answer out of you. You're kind of stubborn."

"I think I have to disagree with that," I said. "But since I'm being forced to answer that … I think I am. And he is with me, I'm pretty sure." Just saying that out loud was giving me butterflies … and I knew I'd have to go back to the VA eventually. Jack and I had certainly had something, and maybe Trevor had been the only one to see it at first for a long time, but we did, and I didn't want to allow it to simply fade away because something so tragic had occurred in my life. I'd have to let go of my brother in due time, but that didn't mean I'd have to let go of Jack. He would still be there.

"So am I invited to the wedding?"

"What wedding? We're not getting married."

"He proposed, didn't he?"

I wrinkled my nose. "I told you that already. No." I paused, trying to find a more comfortable position. I think I'd been sitting long enough already. "Besides, if we ever _did, _it wouldn't be for a while, because I just turned seventeen in July, and—"

"And you're still jailbait," he said.

"Exactly."

"So it would be illegal if you decided to … well, you know."

"We really don't need to be talking about this right now," I said, my face burning strawberry.

"How old is this Jack guy, anyway?"

I shrugged. "I don't know for sure. Twenty, twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two, I'm not sure. Something like that."

"You mean you never asked him?" Steve looked exasperated. "He could be thirty!"

"No, he looks way too young to be thirty. You'd know if you saw him. Most of the guys in that ward are twenty-five and under, anyway."

"Shame that they're all injured that young," he said, and I nodded, thinking of Trevor and his lost leg. "It does have a nice ring to it, though."

I narrowed my eyes. "What does?"

"Your name, if you ever married him. Eleanor Pace. I can see that."

"Steve, do you _want _me to marry him, or something? Because you're sure acting like you do."

He shrugged. "It's not really up to me who you marry, is it?"

"I don't even need to be worrying about that right now, anyway," I said with finality. "I'm too young."

"Yeah. You are." He started the car then and turned on the heater and the radio. "America" was playing, and it was making me feel sentimental and drawn. It was a beautiful song, and it appealed to me, so I expected Steve to say something in protest or to flip the station, but he didn't. Needless to say, I was surprised. And my head was pounding, I realized—it felt the way it sometimes did right after I'd finished crying about something, and I had no way to stop it. No aspirin, or anything … and even if I did have some type of remedy, it wouldn't work fast enough for me.

"So I guess we're just gonna sit here the rest of the time, huh?"

"I guess so."

"I'm sorry," I blurted out sheepishly.

"For what?"

I reached into my pockets for tissues I knew I didn't have; I had a feeling I was going to burst into tears at any moment, and I wanted to be prepared. "For not being stronger about this whole thing. I just hate it. I mean … I wanted both of you to come back alive but I knew that even if you did, things wouldn't be exactly the same. But I never expected _this,_ and maybe I should have."

Steve reached over and patted my hand, which was a bit unlike him, but I didn't question his motives. We were friends and it was just a comforting gesture. "None of us expected it, El."

"I know. I just feel bad for not being able to deal with it better."

"I think you've been doing a good job."

"You have no idea what it's been like for me …"

He nodded. "Yeah. I do."

And I think that did it for me. I turned away to look out the window and I felt the tears come like torrential rain in Death Valley. It was the first time I'd cried since we'd received the telegram. Wishing I had those tissues, I tried to be discreet about it but I wasn't very successful. But perhaps I was better off—I was sure it'd be much easier to notice if I did have the damn things.

"Hey," Steve said gently, "you okay?"

I whipped around and glared at him, suddenly agitated. "No. I'm not okay, Steve. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure a part of me stopped living on the inside when that telegram came, because I told him once that that's what would happen to me if I ever lost one of you. And you know what? It did happen, and neither he nor that part of me is ever coming back. I am most certainly not okay." He looked away and I wrung my hands nervously. I hadn't meant that, not the way it came out … "I'm sorry," I all but whispered. "I didn't mean it that way."

"I know. I think it's the same with me. I just never thought about it before." He shook his head and looked over at me. "I don't know what we're gonna do without him. Any of us."

"Neither do I."

"Think we should go back over there now? Service is probably about over …"

"Then what's the point?" I sighed. "I just don't think I can. I've tried to be strong every day up until now, and I just can't do it anymore. I'm so exhausted …"

"It is over."

"Huh?"

"Everyone's leaving. The service must be over."

"Thank God." I lifted my eyes to the ceiling, and the sky above that. "Sorry, Soda."

"I think he understands, Eleanor."

"I hope so." I looked through the windshield and noticed that everybody _was _leaving, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe things would start finally returning to normal now. My only dilemma would be letting go, but I could do that in time. Darry and Ponyboy appeared outside the gates then, and didn't seem to see us until they got to Darry's truck. He walked over and Steve rolled down the window.

"How'd it go over there?"

"All right. It's over now. We're headin' home. You two all right here? Eleanor, you look like you've been cryin'. You okay?"

I nodded and offered a small smile. "I'm fine. How are you guys? Are you upset we didn't stay?"

"No. Don't worry about it. We're okay. I guess we'll see you at home, then."

"Yeah, see ya."

He left to go back to his car and Steve turned to face me. "Wanna go grab a bite to eat or somethin'? Unless you just wanna go home."

"No, we can. I haven't eaten all day. I'm starving." I shook my head as he pulled away from the curb, and turned to look back at the cemetery. "I'm just glad this is over. But I miss him so much. And it's only been a few weeks."

"You're tellin' me. Feels like a lifetime since I left Vietnam."

I nodded, even though I didn't know what that must have still felt like for him. But I could sympathize. It felt like it was going to take a lifetime to let go.

xxx

**A/N: **Next update will not take two months, I can tell you that. And sorry if Steve seems a little OOC. Characterization is my downfall, unfortunately, but I really do try my best. I figured some of this would be acceptable under the circumstances …

Reviews are appreciated!


	26. Twenty Six

**A/N: **I'm sorry I lied in the last chapter—I said that it would not take me two months to update, and alas, it has taken me five exactly. So, I truly apologize for that unofficial hiatus, and for those of you that are still here reading … I commend you. If you are new to this story and are just getting caught up, then welcome. Appreciate that there tend to be major gaps in my updates sometimes. Why, I don't know. Usually lack of motivation, writer's block … you name it.

Between the last time that I updated and now, I have lived through many things, including Beatlefest, a tornado, and another birthday. My goal was to update this story before New Year's, and would you look at that, I did it—and with nearly twenty-four hours to spare!

Before I posted this chapter, I edited just about every other chapter in the story, though I've taken the link to the entry about what I've edited in my writing journal out of my profile. However, if you would still like to know, feel free to message me and I can give you the link.

And, without further ado, I give you, at long last … Chapter Twenty-Six. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _The Outsiders _or "Undun," written by Randy Bachman and performed by The Guess Who.

**Chapter Twenty-Six:**

" … _she's come undun, she found a mountain that was far too high / and when she found out she couldn't fly, it was too late … "_

For a long time following the funeral, nobody was themselves. Everything was different, changed, altered—whatever. And apparently I couldn't handle it as well as I'd assumed I could. God knows something like that isn't easy, but I kind of let myself go. I quit my job at the salon because I just couldn't concentrate on my work anymore. School just didn't hold the same importance to me as it once had, and going to the VA seemed more like a chore than something I liked to do. Trevor now struck me as obnoxious and clingy and Jack was too cool, too confident, too smart, and too serious, and I hated being around him more than a few minutes at a time.

I didn't know what was wrong with me. And surely, it wasn't _me. _I wasn't the same calm, easygoing Eleanor that most everybody knew. Oh, no, I was somebody completely different—moody, emotional, surly, and brooding, periodically lapsing back and forth, in and out of some low-key depression.

Only it wasn't really depression. I didn't know what it was. Grief? Regret? Some type of weird recovery process they'd never covered during the mental health unit in school?

As a result, though, I took to drinking—only a little bit, a glass of aged vodka from the liquor cabinet every couple of days when nobody was home, just enough to make me feel light-headed and floaty. And that was it. It wasn't something I wanted to do. It was almost impulsive, because I knew it would make me feel better. Released me. But at the same time it scared me, because I'd never had a drop of alcohol before in all my seventeen years of living.

Well, no, that's a lie. Once, when I was twelve, we'd gone out to dinner—nothing real fancy, but it was a nice treat—and my dad let me have a little sip of his chardonnay, just a little one, because I was curious to know what it tasted like. And needless to say, I didn't like it, and vowed never to touch alcohol again.

And now here I was, downing a glass of vodka once every few days as if it were my saving grace. Some days two glasses, if my mood was exceptionally low. But I really only got to the point where it gave me a buzz, and nothing more. _Drunk _was certainly not something I was aiming for.

But there was one day weeks later when I had a little more than I think I needed—I was just very slightly past being tipsy—and I took a seat at our piano bench, touching the keys gingerly. Because of the alcohol, I felt warm and floaty, but at the same time I was overcome by a reminiscent, sentimental emotion that I couldn't explain. My eyes were moist enough to make my vision blurry, but I'd been doing this for years, and even though I hadn't touched the thing in almost three, I knew I could play it upside-down in my sleep, if I wanted to. I didn't need to see.

I reached forward and pressed down on the 'C' key, and pulled my hand back the minute it made a sound. Even after it faded off, it still left a light ringing in my head. What was I doing? I wouldn't even have toyed with this if I hadn't been drinking. But I tried again, despite my apprehensions. Mama taught me to play "Greensleeves" when I was young, and I always used to play it around Christmastime. So did the radio, only I don't think it was really a Christmas song. It just sounded like one.

My hands found the song's beginning position and what followed was a rather choppy and very butchered rendition of the original piece. I couldn't play properly while under the influence, and I surely knew it, but it didn't stop me. It felt weird, however, because the only thing in the past two and a half years that I'd done involving this piano was dust it when I cleaned. Because of me, it was absolutely dust-free … but it needed to be tuned.

I ended the song on an atrocious-sounding note that made even borderline-drunk me cringe, but when I sat back I realized how suddenly complete I felt. And I was almost glad I'd done it this way; if I had attempted this sober, I could have put myself in danger of some kind of meltdown. It sounds dramatic, but I really didn't want that to happen.

I wanted to play again, but I had an idea and got up to do that instead. I ambled over to the armchair and sat down everything but gracefully, and set the rotary telephone in my lap. I was home alone and I was going to call Jack. So I dialed the VA's number and some lady whose voice I didn't recognize answered.

"Hello?" She didn't sound cheerful.

"Maureen?"

"There's no Maureen here," the voice snapped. "You obviously have the wrong number."

Click.

"You have a nice day, too, lady!" I exclaimed, and slammed the receiver down as if _I'd _been the one hanging up on _her._ And then I picked it right back up again and dialed what I thought—and hoped—was the correct number. A softer voice answered, and I knew I was right this time.

"Veterans Administrations Hospital, this is Maureen speaking. How may I help you?"

"M-Maureen?"

"Eleanor?"

"Mm-hmm," I all but giggled. "I got a question for you."

"Are you all right? You sound a little … inebriated," she said bluntly.

"It's okay," I replied, though my words were slurred, so it came out sounding more like, "Iz okay." "I wanted to know if it would be possible for me to speak to Jack?"

"Jack Pace?"

"Yes." Though I lingered on the 'S,' so it sounded like, "Yessss."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Never better. Everything is good. I am happy. May I speak to Jack?"

"Well, I'm sorry, Eleanor, but they sent him home. They decided he'd recovered well enough. He's in Chicago now."

Immediately the ringing in my head stopped. I felt instantly sober. "Oh."

"If you want, though, I can give you his telephone number. He left it with me in case you ever called or came by again."

I grinned dumbly. "Did he, really?"

"He really liked you, Eleanor." She hesitated, letting that sink it. "Would you like it? The number?"

"Umm … yeah. Yeah, I would."

"Okay. Give me one second." There was muffled shuffling on the other end for a moment. "Do you have anything to write on?"

I found a pen buried under a stack of papers on the table next to the chair, and mumbled, "Something to write with …," before cradling the phone with my shoulder in order to use my hand as a makeshift writing surface. "Something to write _on. _Okay. There. Yes, I have it."

And after she read it off to me, I stared at my palm blankly for a long time, and she said, "Will you be coming back?"

"Um … I don't know," I replied slowly, making it sound as if I really _didn't _know. I hated to say it, but without Jack, the VA seemed to lose some of its appeal to me. I still considered it important, but like a lot of things, it wouldn't be nearly the same without him—I guess it would lose some of its significance in my life. "Is Trevor still there?"

"He's being discharged in about a week and a half. His physical therapy has gone very well, and he's healing up quite nicely."

"Oh." Things were changing so fast. "Well, will you call me sometime before he leaves? I want to say goodbye."

"Of course." She paused. "You know he and Jack have made plans to keep in touch, don't you?"

"No, I didn't know that. I'm glad—they're such good friends." They always did remind me a little of Soda and Steve, in some strange way, but I didn't say that. "Is he going back to Cleveland?"

"Yes."

This conversation was becoming trite and awkward. "I'll have to get his address from him. Christmas cards, you know."

"Eleanor, I meant to ask before—how are you doing? I mean, how are you holding up?"

"I'm … I don't know. Or, I _do _know. I feel like I'm trapped in molasses—I can't do anything. I try, and try, and I … just can't."

"I know the feeling. I haven't lost anybody like you have, but I can relate. I felt that way all the time Frank was in Vietnam."

I smiled gently, forgetting my troubles for a moment. "I almost forgot about your husband. Did he make it home safe? And I assume you've had your baby by now, yeah?"

"Mm-hmm. We had a little girl. Her name's Anita." I could hear the smile in her voice. "Anita Weller."

"I really like that name," I told her, and waved as the door opened and Ponyboy came inside. "And I'm glad everything's worked in your favor, Maureen."

"I am, too."

"Who are you talking to?" Pony asked. He dropped his things haphazardly onto the couch and stopped next to my chair on his way into the kitchen.

"Hang on a sec." I covered the phone briefly with my hand. "A friend from the VA. Could you grab me my drink from the kitchen, please? I think I left it on the table."

"Yeah, sure." He walked away and it was only then that I realized the drink I'd asked him to get was the vodka bottle that, in my previously impaired state, I'd forgotten to put back in the cabinet. I cursed myself silently.

"Uh, Maureen, I've got to go," I said quickly. "I'll talk to you later. Sorry." I set the phone back on the base and jumped up from the chair, meeting Ponyboy halfway between the living room and the kitchen.

"Uh, Eleanor?" He was holding the vodka bottle in one hand, a quarter of it gone already, and my empty glass in the other. "I hope this wasn't the drink you were talking about."

"No, of course not!" I pretended to be horrified, but I know he saw right through that façade. "I was making tea. Green tea, actually." Good lies are all in the—

"I didn't see any in there."

Damn.

"Okay, fine, I wasn't making tea. I was—"

"Tryin' to get drunk." It was a blunt statement, not an inquiry.

"Sort of."

"Eleanor, I hate you when you do stuff like this. Here." He shoved the bottle and the glass into my arms, and some splashed onto my shirt.

"What are you talking about?"

He switched on the television and flipped back and forth between channels absently. "You're just being dumb, Eleanor. You've been doin' it ever since"—he hesitated briefly—"ever since we got that telegram."

"Well, how are _you _keeping yourself together? I would have expected more of a reaction from you now that it's all over."

"Because—You remember that thing Darry told us a while ago, or told me? About how you can't stop living just 'cause you lose somebody else? Now's about the time _you _should take that advice."

"It's not that easy," I said. "It's different for me."

"It's always different for you."

"No, that's not what I … Oh, forget it." I shook my head, deciding it was senseless to argue. He was right, anyway. "Nevermind. I have to make a phone call." I looked at my palm, Jack's number imprinted in my skin, and then over at the line next to the chair. "I'll use the extension in Darry's room."

I started to walk away but Pony's voice stopped me again. "Hey, Eleanor?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you, you know. I just worry sometimes, 'cause you do weird things."

"I know. I love you, too. But please don't worry about me, all right? Everyone worries about me. I'm sick of it."

"They probably have good reason to," he said earnestly, but I didn't answer. I stuck the vodka bottle back into the liquor cabinet, the glass into the sink, and walked off down the hall.

I hoped that Darry wouldn't mind if I used his phone but I didn't have a line in my room, and I wanted the privacy now. That's exactly why I didn't have my own phone, never mind that we couldn't afford it—in past years, I wouldn't ever have had a moment of peace if I'd wanted to use it.

I almost backed out of calling him. I had the phone in one hand and I was staring at the other as if waiting for a sixth finger to emerge. I had to do this, though, if I ever wanted to speak to him again.

So I dialed the number. Slowly, but I did it. It rang and rang and rang, and I was just about to hang up, until—"Hello?"

"J-Jack?"

"Speaking. Who is this?"

"It's Eleanor. You didn't recognize my voice?"

"You stuttered one word."

I laughed gently. "Well, I called the VA today, and Maureen Weller gave me your number. She said you left it with her."

"That I did."

"I didn't know you'd been discharged."

"You hadn't been by in a while."

"I know. I'm sorry about that."

"Don't be. I understand."

I sighed, twisting the phone cord around my index finger absent-mindedly. "You know, I did something different today."

"Yeah? What?"

"I played the piano."

"I didn't know you ever did that."

"I didn't. I mean, I did all the time before my parents died. And then I just … stopped playing. It was too hard for me. But today I picked it up again. Isn't that weird?"

"Maybe you're finally starting to heal."

"Well, I don't know," I admitted. "I was a little intoxicated at the time."

"Oh." He sounded a bit flustered. I could almost see him scratching his head in confusion. "Wait a second. Eleanor, you've been drinking?"

"Only a little bit."

"A likely story."

"Just a glass or two every couple of days. Nothing more."

"You sure?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You're not lying to me, are you?"

Instinctively, I stamped my foot on the floor, even though I was sitting. "Stop that. You sound like my dad."

He laughed quietly. "I miss you, Eleanor."

I nodded, though I knew he couldn't see that. "I miss you, too, Jack."

"How's everything going? Are you doing okay?"

"I don't know. I guess so. I really don't know anything anymore. Everything's real strange now, and nothing's right. You know?"

"Yeah. I know. I came home and nothing was how it was when I left. I lost my apartment and everything I owned there was back with my folks. Now I'm living with them, too, until I can find my own place again. And a job."

"I'm really sorry about all of that, Jack."

"It's not your fault."

"I know. Couldn't you go back to school for a while?"

"What's the point at this stage? I'm twenty-two years old. Aren't most people my age graduating by now?"

"You could still enroll again." I thought for a moment—I can't say I was shocked by his age. Yes, he was quite a few years older than I was, but at the same time he wasn't twenty-five as I'd thought. I knew that would have been a bit of a stretch.

"Yeah. Whatever. I have a better idea, anyway."

"What's that?"

"Eleanor, let's change our names and run away to France."

I laughed. "I really like that idea."

"I'm serious. We should do it. You speak French, right? I know you told me that once."

"_Oui, je parle fran__çais. Et tu parles anglais, n'est-ce pas?" _

"See? I didn't understand a word of that. We'll get by just fine."

"_Merci beaucoup," _I giggled. _"J'aimerais voyager à France avec toi."_

"You can speak English now."

"_D'accord. Je regrette."_

"No, I'm serious," he laughed. "Speak English."

"Okay." I grinned. "Sorry. It's habitual sometimes, really—we're only allowed to speak French in class. I get kinda used to it."

"No English whatsoever? How do you _do _that?"

"Jack, I've been taking French for the last five years," I told him. "I may butcher the accent like you've never heard, but I have a decent grasp on the language."

"Hmm. Well, how do you say, 'I love you'?"

I stopped breathing for a moment, and all of the blood rushed to my head. I thought I might pass out. "Excuse me?"

"'I love you, Eleanor.' How do you say that in French?"

I couldn't stop the grin that crept slowly across my face. I wasn't near a mirror, but I knew that if I could see myself in one, I would be completely glowing. _"'Je t'aime, _Eleanor,'" I said. "That's how you say it. And _je t'aime, aussi, _Jack."

"What's that mean?"

"I said, I love you, too, Jack."

"See, now?" he said quietly. "We'd do perfectly fine in France."

I giggled happily, about to say something else, but just at that moment the door opened and Darry came in. "There's a phone in the living room, you know," he said.

"Hang on a second." I covered up the speaker and moved the receiver away from my mouth. "I know," I assured him. "You remember my friend Jack from the VA, right? I'm speaking to him right now. That's why I came in here. I was hoping you wouldn't mind."

"Oh. No, that's all right." I was happy that it wasn't a big deal. I thought he'd make more of a fuss about it. "Well, wrap it up pretty soon, okay?"

"Okay. I thought I'd make dinner tonight, anyway."

"Yeah, that's fine. Hey, you know, it's Friday. You and Steve goin' to the movies tonight?"

"Oh." I shook my head. "No. We don't really do that anymore."

"Oh." He looked a bit surprised, but I think he understood. "All right, well, see ya in a bit."

I nodded and he shut the door a crack, and I settled back against the headboard and set the base in my lap. "Okay," I said. "Sorry about that. You still there?"

"No. This is a recording."

I laughed. "So I've been talking to a tape this whole time."

"I guess so."

"Some smart tape, you are."

"I must be, yeah." He laughed gently, and then I heard an older woman's voice on another line: "Jack, dear, I need to use the telephone now, please." It was followed by a click as she hung up again.

"Was that your mom?"

"Yep. Guess I gotta get off now. But it was nice to talk to you again, Eleanor."

"You, too." I smiled. "You should call me sometime."

"I would, if I had your number."

"You don't have my—Oh, I guess you wouldn't. I don't think I ever gave it to you. Do you have anything to write it on?"

"I do now." He laughed. "This is great. Not only do I get a phone call from a pretty girl, but I get her number, too. All in one day."

I laughed, too. "Well, you're quite lucky, then. I'm never that fortunate with boys."

"Probably 'cause they all know you're with me."

"Probably." Although I wasn't aware that I _was _with him. But I wasn't about to argue. He had asked me how to say, 'I love you,' in French, after all. That had to mean something.

"Eleanor, do you mind if I call you tomorrow?"

"Sure, if you want to run up our phone bill."

"All right. I'll wait a few days, then."

"Okay. I do need to get off though, now, too. I have to start dinner."

"Yeah, and my mom's dying to use the phone. I'll talk to you later, Eleanor."

"I hope so," I replied quietly. "Bye, Jack."

I hung up, then, and that was that. I made dinner and ate with my brothers and attempted to participate in conversation … but all I could fully concentrate on was Jack. He said 'I love you,' but then he didn't mention it again so I didn't know if he really meant it. It was absolutely perplexing to me, and the confusion that came along with trying to figure it out was giving me a migraine.

I remembered unexpectedly that there was some old cheap wine in the liquor cabinet too, because Darry was having a rare glass with his dinner, and he must have noted my frustration because he asked me if I wanted a sip. Ponyboy glanced at me tersely and knowingly, and I burst into peals of laughter and couldn't stop.

And the wine was bitter and it burned going down. But it tasted rather okay.

xxx

**A/N: **Sorry the ending was a little … suckish, but this chapter was already going on ten pages on Word and I started to feel like I was rambling, and I had to stop somewhere. I guess it's an all right ending, just not the best.

So that nobody is confused, the French translations are as follows. I did not use an online translator for any of these, as I am taking French this year and, aside from a couple of verb conjugations, these were a few basic phrases that we learned. I love French and wanted to include it somewhere in the story; I could always see Eleanor learning to speak it, too:  
_"Oui, je parle fran__çais. Et tu parles anglais, n'est-ce pas?" _– "Yes, I speak French. And you speak English, right?"  
"_Merci beaucoup. J'aimerais voyager à France avec toi." _– "Thank you very much. I would love to travel to France with you."  
"_D'accord. Je regrette." _– "Okay. I'm sorry."

Also, I noticed something else about this story recently—I remember in Chapter One, Eleanor mentions picking up guitar instead of piano after her parents died. I realized that I never mentioned that anywhere else in the story. It was supposed to be kind of significant, but I think I either forgot about it or didn't know where to include it. While I was editing, I mentioned it briefly in one of the earlier chapters—can't remember which—but I didn't include it anywhere else. I want to include it somehow in a future chapter, but I'm not quite sure how I'll do that yet—I might just do a branching-off oneshot again like I did with _Up from the Skies._ We'll see. But I just wanted to mention that, because it's been bothering me.

I also don't condone underage drinking, so please don't take that seriously. There was something else I wanted to mention too but this author's note is already becoming longer than the chapter, so I'll save it for next time. Happy New Year!

Reviews and concrit are appreciated!


End file.
